More than half of Ugandan AIDS patients don't get the drugs they need

doi:10.1136/bmj.39486.598044.DB

BMJ 2008;336:348-349 (16 February), doi:10.1136/bmj.39486.598044.DB

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More than half of Ugandan AIDS patients don’t get the drugs they need

Henry Wasswa

¹ Kampala

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The number of Ugandans with AIDS who are being treated withantiretroviral drugs is now 110 000, but health authoritiessay that more than twice that number should be receiving them.

"We have about one million people with AIDS in the country,"said Emmanuel Otala, Uganda’s minister for primary healthcare, last week. "A total of 250 000 deserve to be put on theARVs [antiretrovirals] because their CD4 count has reduced tobelow 200. Of these, so far there are only 110 000 on the drugs,and we have a deficit of 140 000 who would otherwise be on theARVs. The resources are limited, because we depend on donors."

Dr Otala said that about 94 000 patients with AIDS were takingantiretrovirals at the beginning of 2007, with slightly morethan 1000 new patients being put on the drugs every month.

The country was the second in Africa . . . [Full text of this article]

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