LOOKING at her in the crowd of protesters at the ARV
Clinic at the Adeoyo Maternity, Yemetu, Ibadan, Oyo State, it was obvious that
the issue at stake was a matter of life and death. The protesters carried
placards with the inscription, ‘No to Tyonex!’ ‘People with HIV are dying’, and
so on.
Bose Ajamu, a mother of two and a
peer counsellor at the US Presidential Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)
Clinic, University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, was one of the scores of HIV
patients who converged on the health facility to protest continued supply and
administration of Tyonex, a brand of ARV medicines containing Zidovudine,
Lamivudine and Nevirapine.
While she could not disclose exactly
how she got infected with HIV, Mrs Ajamu, a Nigeria Certificate in Education
(NCE) holder, said she tested positive to the dreaded virus in 2003 at the age
of 22. Although, her 20-year-old son is aware of her mother’s HIV status, his
six-year-old young brother could only recall seeing his mother always taking
pills every day after breakfast.
“Every woman should be tested for HIV
so that they can prevent their babies from being HIV-positive. If we really
want to have an HIV-free country, we need to screen all pregnant women. This
should be voluntary and those that test positive to HIV be made to access care
to, at least, protect the newborn from contracting the virus,” she said.
Although societal support is very
important in preventing stigmatisation and thus ensuring that people living
with the virus can openly declare their HIV status, Ajamu said it was important
that husbands of women that test positive to HIV should also support their
wives to live positively with their condition.
Mrs Abimbola Martin, who tested
positive to HIV in 2000, said she joined the protest following her narrow
escape from death middle of December, 2013 (after prolonged ingestion of the
drug). She said she would have died if she had not received quick help at
International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa (ICASA) meeting in South
Africa.
Mrs Martin told Saturday Tribune that
she had commenced HIV treatment over 13 years ago when she started vomiting and
her vomit was laced with blood. And Although she told her doctors at the PEPFAR
clinic, where she had received another consignment of ARV to last for four
months about her poor appetite, dizzy spells and fatigue, they did not
discourage her from travelling to South Africa for this HIV-related conference.
She said, “When I started vomiting
blood on the third day at ICASA, they did not believe me. Eventually, a medical
doctor came to test me and in putting his hand into my mouth, I started
vomiting again. The vomit had blood in it and I was rushed in an ambulance to
the hospital,” she recounted the genesis of several tests linking her symptoms
to the ARV treatment she was placed on.
“They asked me to stop the ARVs I had
with me from Nigeria. This was replaced with a new set of ARVs and they warned
me against taking the ARVs collected at UCH, Ibadan.”
Mrs Martin, whose CD4 count had
dropped from over 800 to about 300, said she started noticing a difference in
her health a week after the change made in the brand of her ARV medication.
Addressing people watching the
protest at the hospital, Mr Obatunde Oladapo, the National Coordinator,
Treatment Action Movement Nigeria (a coalition of treatment activists that
advocate for quality ARV treatment), said it was to demand for the withdrawal
of Tyonex, a brand of ARV from HIV treatment clinics.
Mr Oladapo, who said a lot had been
done to ensure that the brand of ARV is withdrawn from use, said the body
decided to come to the hospital to personally cart away all consignments of the
offensive ARV to prevent its being further dispensed for use by people living
with HIV.
Among steps taken on the issue,
according to him, were a press conference organised in October, 2013, a letter
written to the Federal Ministry of Health as well as dialogues at the ICASA
with the Health Minister, Professor Onyebuchi Chukwu, on the purported
substandard ARV.
“Many of our colleagues taking
this brand of ARV lately have been complaining that their health have been
deteriorating since they started using it,” Oladapo said.
Part of the complaints against the
drug, according to him, include the ARV’s poor packaging, conflicting
information on the leaflets, its bitter taste (unlike other brands of ARVs) and
its brittleness.
Mr Oladapo insiste that the Health
Ministry must withdraw the brand of ARV, which he claimed did not meet the
World Health Organisation (WHO)’s prequalification standard for essential
drugs.
Oladapo said further: “They cannot be
spending billions of naira and MDG funds to procure it and they are forcing us
as Nigerians to take it. We have complained but they did not do anything
concrete about it. We met them again in Cape Town, South Africa, at a meeting
that also had international partners and the government. The government
promised they were going to withdraw this ARV from our clinic immediately.
“While we were burying one of our
colleagues, Gloria Nwagnuwe, in Asaba last Friday, we heard it from a good
authority that the Health Minister insisted they should continue giving Tyonex
until he has ample proof that it is bad. We are asking: does he want us to see
more people dead?
“We will continue to seize Tyonex in
any clinic where we find it until the government listens to us. We are also
asking the government to dialogue with us on other issues affecting ARV
programme in the country.
“It may be business to them, but it
is our lives. Our lives are at stake and we are not going to allow anyone send
us to early graves in droves.”
However, early at the Adeoyo
Hospital, one of medical doctors attending to patients at the HIV clinic, Dr
Folake Adurogbola, declared that nobody had come to complain about Tyonex,
adding that the brand of ARV was what was supplied to the clinic.
“If there had been feedbacks from our
clients on this drug, it would have been changed,” Dr Adurogbola assured.
Also, Dr Soji Adeyanju, the Site
Coordinator of the APIN programme at the Adeoyo Maternity Hospital, said “The
programme is going through a phase that will negatively impact the successes of
the programme.”
The health minister in a reaction
sent to Saturday Tribune via SMS said “The drug was duly registered by the
National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC). All
medicines distributed or sold in Nigeria must be registered by NAFDAC. For
drugs supplied by Global Fund, in addition to NAFDAC registration, they are
usually prequalified by WHO. The ARV drug in question was procured by the
Federal Government; so it required only NAFDAC’s registration.
“Laboratory tests so far conducted by
NAFDAC (with international observers) on the drug shows that the drug is safe
and meets the standards that initially qualified it for NAFDAC’s registration.
However, the investigations of the death of a PLWHA (Person Living With
HIVAIDS) who was on the drug and of the drug itself are still ongoing.
“Meanwhile, the regulatory authority
(NAFDAC) has suspended further dispensing and use of the drug pending the
conclusion of the investigations.
This is with effect from last week
Thursday. I am not aware of any fund meant for the National Agency for
the Control of AIDS (NACA) that was diverted to the ministry. NACA is not under
the Ministry of Health.”
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Society
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