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UGANDA: Aleng Almarina: "If the drugs run out, my condition will worsen"
10 Jul 2008 18:43:23 GMT
 Source: IRIN

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KITGUM, 10 July 2008 (IRIN) - Aleng Almarina, 53, is one of several thousand internally displaced persons (IDPs) who have returned to their villages after years in camps across northern Uganda, where a 20-year conflict between the government and the rebel Lord's Resistance Army forced up to two million people to flee their homes. She told IRIN/PlusNews of her struggle to access life-prolonging antiretroviral (ARV) medication.

"I went back home in February this year after staying for five years in Padibe main [IDP] camp [in Kitgum district]. I have five children and the eldest is in senior one [grade in school]. My husband died of AIDS in 2002. He grew very thin, like an ill baby, and he died.

"Two years after my husband died I started falling sick and I did not know that my husband infected me with HIV. My daughter decided to take me for a blood test in St Joseph's hospital in Kitgum in 2004.

"The doctors said I was HIV-positive. They said my CD4 count [which measures the strength of the immune system] was so low - below 150 - [ARVs are usually administered when the CD4 count is 300] and I should start taking ARVs, but there were no ARV drugs in stock. They told me I should take septrin [an antibiotic] and I stayed taking septrin for three years.

"I survived by the grace and mercy of God, because by then I was ill and thin. Doctors would treat [opportunistic] infections that would arise, that's the reason why I didn't die.

"Last month the doctors at St Joseph's started giving me the ARV drugs - they said the new supply had arrived. Only a few lucky HIV-positive mothers were started on the drugs.

"I received one tin of nevirapine, one tin of zidovudine and one tin of septrin. They said after one month I should go for ... [more] drugs. I am still worried, because if the drugs run out of supply my condition will worsen ... once you start taking the ARVs you should not break or miss even for a day.

"I take two tablets of the ARV drugs in the morning, two tablets in the evening and one tablet of septrin in the evening. The drugs are so strong, and after taking them I feel like vomiting and I feel too weak to walk.

"The doctors say we need to eat a lot of food and fruits - we should feed on a balance diet and take a lot of fluids, but I am just beginning life in my village and I do not have enough food."

ca/kr/he

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An internally displaced man rests between mosquito nets at the Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) hospital in Markunda in the Central African Republic, July 7, 2008. Sparsely-populated Central African Republic, one of ...


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