Aids patient forced to shuttle between four state-run hospitals

 SMTV Desk 2017-01-25 12:17:48  Hyderabad,aids patient,forced,shuttle,between,
Aids patient forced to shuttle between four state-run hospitals

Hyderabad January 25: In a 24-hour span, a 14-year-old boy diagnosed with AIDS was forced to shuttle between four state-run hospitals — NIMS, Osmania General Hospital, Niloufer hospital and Chest hospital — in a shocking display of insensitivity.Diagnosed with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection with a CD4 count of 160 during routine treatment for fever at NIMS last month, the teen has just his grandmother to look after him after he lost his parents. While his mother died in 2009, his father died in a road accident two years later.His trauma intensified on Monday after NIMS, where he was undergoing treatment for two weeks, referred the boy to state-run Niloufer hospital for Antiretroviral therapy (ART)."Follow-up at ART centre. Referred to Niloufer hospital for further management," the NIMS doctors wrote in the boy s discharge case-sheet. His discharge sheet also mentioned he had HIV-induced dementia.This was apparently done as NIMS hospital does not have its own ART centre - which is a state-funded facility providing free drugs to HIV/AIDS patients with poor CD4 count to boost immunity and prolong lifespan.However, the boy, a resident of Borabanda and a Class 7 student of a government school in Erragada, was not registered at Niloufer hospital s ART centre when he reached there with his old grandmother at 7.15 pm. Since the children s hospital does not take kids beyond 12 years, they advised him to approach Osmania General Hospital.Dr C Suresh, superintendent, Niloufer hospital acknowledged the rule. "Yes, we do not admit children beyond 12 years of age and refer them to higher centres like Osmania General Hospital or Gandhi hospital. But on humanitarian grounds, we sometimes admit them."Without wasting time, the boy and his grandmother, left for OGH, but found no help from ward boys when they landed there at 8.30 pm."Support staff at OGH refused to ferry patients beyond casualty ward at night and asked for hefty bribes to move the patient in wheel-chair. Some of them were also drunk," said Mujtaba Hasan Askari, Managing Trustee & President, NGO Helping Hand Foundation, while quoting volunteers eye-witness accounts.It was with much difficulty that their volunteers arranged for the duo s overnight stay on the hospital s corridor, but their ordeal continued till Tuesday morning when the general medicine out-patient (OP) unit refused to see him and referred him straight to ART centre.