CHENNAI: Stephen (36) was refused admission in Government General Hospital, Chennai, in July last. He then went to Tambaram Government Hospital for Thoracic Medicine, where he was admitted for merely two days.

Rajan sought treatment for piles at Dindugul Government Hospital about two-and-a-half months ago. Doctors at the hospital refused to admit him.

Sivan needed surgery for aggravated hernia. Ivan Stetford Hospital, Ambattur, referred him to the GH, from where he was sent to Tambaram GHTM. He was then referred to a halfway home in Kolathur run by an NGO.

About the same time last year, doctors at the GH refused to administer blood transfusions for Maragatham, suffering from severe anaemia. She would have died but for the intervention of voluntary organisations. (All names changed to protect their identity.)

Common thread

There is a thread connecting all the above people seeking treatment for relatively minor yet crucial procedures in the government sector: they are all poor HIV-positive patients, who have been denied life-saving procedures in the public healthcare set-up.

K.N. Srinivasavaradhan, project director, Freedom Foundation, says a positive patient cannot expect inpatient care at Government hospitals. His organisation, which provides a short stay home and clinic for HIV-positive people, receives about three-four patients on a lean day. Some of them come in critical conditions and require surgery almost immediately. The organisation has worked out arrangements with private hospitals to conduct surgeries for these people.

But it is not merely the quality of care, or the complete lack of it, that offends the HIV-positive people. It is the attitude itself. Sridhar (35), an intravenous drug user, was advised to get a CD4 count at the GH. "The counter staff harassed me when I asked them where I should go to take a CD4 test, pretending not to understand and forcing me to say that it is to test for HIV."

"The moment they know you are HIV-positive, the attitude changes," Sivan says. The 40-year-old HIV-positive person, who sought treatment at GH in the end of February, complained that the person on duty in Ward No. 10 accused him of loose morals. "He shouted at me in front of all the waiting patients. It was the most humiliating experience of my life."

Positive persons' networks have, for a long while, been articulating their demands for better care at government hospitals. "Things have improved over the last year, especially in Government hospitals where the ARV treatment has been introduced," says P. Kausalya of the Positive Women's Network. Some of this is due to the fact that HIV-positive people have been posted on the hospital monitoring committees.

She hastens to add that while the care at the STD clinics (designated to handle HIV/AIDS) in each of these hospitals is good, abuse of the positive patient happens mostly in other departments where staff have little or no sensitivity or training in handling positive people.

Much to be done

D. Noorie, president of South India Positive Network, credits the Institute of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Egmore, for commendable work with pregnant women and newborns, but agrees that much has to be done to make the government sector a friendly place for positive people. Even the critics of the public health care system stop to point to the fact that the private healthcare set-up has by and large abdicated its responsibility towards positive people who need medical attention. In their argument for a better health system and attitude, they insist that provisions should also be made to bring round the private health care practitioners to treat HIV-positive people and introduce punitive action for those who violate, in the private sector or public sector.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail