DUSHANBE, August 22, Asia-Plus — Since February 2006, 20 HIV-sufferers, who were among those undergoing antiretroviral therapy, have died in Tajikistan, Asia-Plus has learned from Matluba Rahmonova, an official with the Republican AIDS-Prevention Center.
According to her, the main causes of their death are late applying to doctors, interrupting medical treatment, or irregular carrying out of doctor instructions.
She noted that of 872 officially registered HIV sufferers in Tajikistan, 87 now undergo antiretroviral therapy.
Since 1991, when the first case of HIV-infection was registered in the country, 80 HIV-sufferers have died in the country, the AIDS-Prevention Center official said.
“The rate of mortality among the HIV-sufferers in Tajikistan is 10 percent and it will rise in future,” Rahmonova said
According to figures provided by the Republican AIDS-Prevention Center, 162 new cases of HIV-infection have been registered in Tajikistan over the first six months of this year.
Effective HIV/AIDS care requires antiretroviral therapy as a treatment option. Without access to antiretroviral therapy, people living with HIV/AIDS cannot attain the fullest possible physical and mental health and cannot play their fullest role as actors in the fight against the epidemic, because their life expectancy will be too short. Health care workers will remain disempowered and cannot contribute to the fight against HIV to the fullest of their potential. Children will be orphaned earlier, stigma and discrimination will continue to be fuelled by the perception that HIV infection is a death sentence.
All people who need antiretroviral therapy should have access to it. WHO proposed as a target that by 2005, 3 million people should have access, and called for the adoption in resource-limited settings of a public health approach to antiretroviral treatment as a tool to reach this goal.
