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HIV drugs should be priority

Reports of shortage of antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) gives cause for concern.

The reports say Persons Living with HIV (PLHIVs) who obtain their supply of ARVs from the hospital have been denied their lifeline for the past five months because the drugs are locked up in the Central Medical Stores inTema.

This, indeed, is an unfortunate situation because, unlike other drugs, ARVs cannot be easily bought from pharmacy shops.
Moreover, the consequence of such a drug holiday is drug resistance, which experts say can lead to the emergence of drug-resistant viruses being transferred to people, with dire consequences for the whole country.

Sadly, the unavailability of the drugs is not due to a national shortage but an administrative lapse on the part of KATH administrators.

It is a truism that currently the ARV stock is low. Ghana has had problems with the supply of ARVs, simply because the country relies heavily on the Global Fund for resources for its treatment programme. This means that when money from that source is not available, the treatment programme suffers.

But, currently, Ghana has ARVs that will be sufficient for 56,000 PLHIVs for between three and four months.

The drugs were procured at a cost of $8.9 million by the Ghana AIDS Commission, with funds provided by the Global Fund.

In addition, the government provided GHc5.7 million to support ARVs and the prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV.

According to the Technical Director of the GAC, Dr Richard Amenyah, the regions had been asked to collect their allocations.

He explained that anytime allocations were done, the National AIDS Control Programme (NACP) made available some money to be used for transportation.

However, when the NACP is unable to release that money on time due to bureaucratic bottlenecks, the regions are expected to devise other means of collecting the drugs while waiting to receive the money.

The shortage of the drugs at KATH is clearly a stock management issue and an administrative failure, considering the fact that authorities of KATH have been lifting other pharmaceutical supplies from the Central Medical Stores regularly.

The ARVs are not available because somebody in authority has not issued an order for the drugs to be collected.

Is this an indication that the KATH leadership does not see HIV as a priority?

It is unacceptable that delays in getting the ARVs to the regions have become a perennial issue, an indication of ineffective leadership by hospital administrators.

It is important for regional health administrators to take ownership of the HIV treatment programme and prioritise it, so that as they make their monthly trips to Accra to collect drugs from the Central Medical Stores, they collect the ARVs too.

We of the Daily Graphic are appealling to hospital administrators and regional directors to prioritise HIV commodities because they are such that they cannot be treated like ordinary drugs.

We further call on the government to support the local production of ARVs to reduce the country’s dependence on donor funds and also include them in the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) drug list, so PLHIVs can easily get them.

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