CHENNAI: HIV/AIDS has led to a slew of concerns that the educated and the illiterate alike are grappling with in Namakkal district.

Most people are aware of the disease. The number of suicides after diagnosis has fallen, but people still fall a prey to quacks and claims of cure by indigenous practitioners.

Private allopathic practitioners, some of them are undergoing a training programme organised by Tamil Nadu Dr. MGR Medical University, continue to fear infection.

The infected live in constant fear about a future without job and money.

It is one thing to provide free therapy but another to ensure that both the affected and the medical professionals feel safe about handling the patients. With free anti-retroviral therapy (ART) being given in the government hospital at Namakkal, the concern has shifted to rehabilitation.

The district headquarters hospital has so far screened 3,400 persons, and 1,240 of them are under anti-retroviral therapy. It has 56 children under the therapy. Half of them are being brought up by their grand parents. This week, the hospital started the therapy for a five-month-old child, born to a woman who denied herself the therapy. Another nine-month-old child was recently put under the therapy. So far, the hospital has identified 212 children as `positive.'

Those undergoing treatment are from poor families and go to government schools. For hospital authorities, it is a blessing since lack of close attention will prevent stigmatisation. But among adults who are under the therapy, there is the nagging worry about the lack of steady jobs.

"I am healthy because I take treatment and I have a job again," says M. Natarajan who runs a community care centre for the HIV/AIDS infected.

More doctors needed

Dhanam, secretary, HIV Ullor Nala Sangam, who has been networking since 1997, wants specialists to treat sexually transmitted diseases.

She says more doctors are needed at the government hospital to treat pneumonia and other infections.

Dhanam had earlier tried Siddha medicines but gave them up after some side effects. In the past two years, not many have sought the Indian systems of medicine, she says.

Earlier, at least 25-30 people died in a month of the disease, but now 12 or 13 succumb, says Mr. Natarajan. Elders and children suffer the most. They have no money, and some have been forced into marriage without assurance of money. Learning a skill would have benefited them, particularly girls, he says.

The networking organisations want ashrams for the abandoned people. Over 20 patients under the therapy continue staying at the hospital because they have nowhere to go. The hospital has planned to start an ART ward with 20 beds each for men and women.

Another worry of the doctors is resistance to drugs. Six patients, including children, have shown resistance to first-line drugs, and the hospital is considering putting them on second-line drug therapy.

The doctors and the people under therapy want the Government to start rehabilitation of the affected and crack down on quacks who advertise with claims of cure. Within the town, networking organisations have foiled the designs of quacks, but they continue unchecked in hamlets. But the fundamental requirement now is a focus on rehabilitation of patients.

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