NGO urges government $ 28 million for emergency antiretrovirals



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November 29, 2018 10:11
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Updated on November 29, 2018 at 10:57

Alberto Nieves, director of the Accion Ciudadana civic association against HIV / Aida, said the government's lack of control, omission and disinterest in dealing with the serious situation of people with the disease had aggravated the crisis for two years and this meant a setback in 1992, when workshops were organized to help people recover and their loved ones to prepare for death, in the absence of drugs.

"If at that time someone wants to get tested for HIV and goes to a lab in a public center, there is no reagent, if an HIV-positive person is on treatment and want to know how their health is, there is no reagent, if you want to know how your immune system works (number of CD4), there is no reagent, if you are looking for a way to check if you have syphilis, there is no reagent, and if you are sick, there is no medicine, "said Nieves. "We have a humanitarian emergency situation never seen in previous years."

The actual number of people living with HIV who need one of the 27 antiretrovirals to recover is unknown. Nieves disagrees with the figure of 63,000 affected people reported by the Ministry of Health; says that there is no official explanation on how this amount was reduced if there were 80,000 registered until the first half of 2018. "There is a week, we met with the Ministry's Director General of Health Programs, Yasmira Betancourt, and we had no information about it. "There are also no official figures for those who died due to the lack of treatment, says the activist, but according to information collected in Caracas, between 60 and 65 people would die each month in a hospital. In Carabobo, there were 3,000 deaths in the first half of 2018.

Nieves denounced the fact that by refusing to update its economic indicators, the government is blocking rapid humanitarian assistance, as it did with the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, by receiving official information. on Venezuelan GDP and oil exports. The master plan calculates an expenditure of $ 33 million, of which only $ 5 million. "We ask the executive to place the $ 28 million missing to attend emergency antiretrovirals for one year".

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