India's National AIDS Control
Organisation (NACO), under the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, began
the process to make a law aimed at providing dignified life and right to treatment
to the HIV-AIDS affected in 2002 and its advisory board submitted a draft of
the bill in 2006.
A long time has passed since
then and though we can pat our back on the data set establishing smooth
progress India has made in minimizing spread of HIV-AIDS, the biggest health
epidemic the world is cursed to live with, the main bottleneck remains - of
providing life-saving treatment to the majority of HIV-AIDS infected people -
who exist on the margins of our societies - sex workers, gay, transgenders, injecting
drug users, highway truck drivers and other people living on the periphery of
the society.
Most of them either do not speak for the fear of stigma HIV-AIDS
brings, resulting in boycott by the family or society, or they remain cursed to
die because they cannot access the treatment.
For past some years, India
has had almost the same number of HIV infected people - around 2 million
because the Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) has been able to prevent the further
spread. Since 2007, India has seen AIDS death cases declining by 55% while new
infections have come down by 66% since 2000.
But what about those already
affected with this deadly medical condition that kills the immune system?
Should we leave them to die?
ART is an expensive treatment
regime - and majority of those affected cannot afford it. Also, the social
ostracisation that HIV-AIDS infection brings prevents people to go for
treatment from other sources like open counters or chemist shops because it
compromises confidentiality - a must for every HIV-AIDS regulatory ecosystem
across the world.
India's National AIDS Control
Organization (NACO), established in 1992, has done an impressive work in
containing the HIV-AIDS epidemic numbers tell us. Its clinics and ART
distribution centres function well and the NACO network ensures efficient
implementation to maintain confidentiality.
But what about those who make
policies that makes institutions like NACO run? The need for confidentiality, cost
constraints and social stigma make HIV-AIDS treatment a domain of the
government. It needs to be legally binding. That's why we need a law to take on
HIV-AIDS in India. And a free ART with full confidentiality has to be at its
core.
But the bill, the Human
Immunodeficiency Virus and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (Prevention and
Control) Bill, 2014, that the governments intends to pass in this session of
the Parliament, compromises on this core requirement.
When the NDA government had
revived the 2014 UPA bill on HIV-AIDS in July this year, it was widely expected
that soon the right to HIV-AIDS treatment will be legally binding in India. But
the final version of the bill shows that the government has retracted on this
promise. The amended version of the bill says, "The measures to be taken
by the Central Government or the State Government under section 13 shall
include the measures for providing, as far as possible, Anti-retroviral Therapy
and Opportunistic Infection Management to people living with HIV or AIDS."
'As far as possible' means
government may take measures to provide ART or may not - depending on the definitions
that go behind its decisions. It will not be legally binding. In this form, the
bill will prove just a half-baked act, delaying India's fight against HIV-AIDS.
Also, India slashed its
national budget for HIV-AIDS by Rs. 400 crore this year. Last year, a Reuters
report said that the "government's anti-AIDS programme was in trouble for
more than a year, with bureaucratic delays and a funding crunch resulting in
shortages of condoms and drugs".
There are millions who are still
outside the free ART regime. And they are dying a slow death each passing year.
Experts and activists are questioning the government intent with this budget-cut
and a diluted version of the bill that stops short to make ART or HIV-AIDS
treatment a right for the infected persons. If the government proactively
reaches out to every infected person, including those from the marginalised
communities, promising them free ART and confidentiality, we will be able to
curb the HIV-AIDS menace on a much faster scale.
©SantoshChaubey
