Strangers are not treated here

The dispute of the Ministry of Health and Rospotrebnadzor threaten the life of thousands of HIV-infected residents of the capital without Moscow registration

I will construct a typical situation. A resident of the distant Russian province came to work in Moscow. He lives, works, sends money home to the region, where a salary of 12 thousand is considered to be salary. In short, this man and his family survive in the circumstances proposed by the country from all possible forces. And this man who did not begging from the country did not pay taxes, raised his children and did not abandon his parents, a positive HIV status is found.

This person, most often young - that is, up to 40 years old, life is a road not only as a gift of God, but also as a resource of own responsibility to loved ones, which he cannot bring. And until May this year, he-a stranger in Moscow with his HIV status-knew where to go in order to get medical counseling and tablets of antiretroviral therapy (therapy, which inhibits the destructive power of HIV infection and makes a person non-hazardous to others). This place, which has helped musias Muscovites for many years, is the Federal Center for the Prevention and Control of the spread of AIDS of Rospotrebnadzor under the long -term leadership of the chief Russian specialist in HIV, academician Vadim Pokrovsky.

A few days ago, Academician Pokrovsky officially stated that he has no authority to further treat “non -nemates”, and therefore, more than a thousand people who have received the medicine in the center will not receive these medicines.

He noticed that it is quite strange to deprive the drugs that for 30 years has worked on the methodology for treating HIV infection in Russia. But this was the academician, referring to common sense and his own medical experience and experience, which no one has similar in the country.

But is this an argument for officials?

The Ministry of Health, in turn, refers to the fact that now Rospotrebnadzor, in whose department is the Federal AIDS Center, does not have authority to provide medical support of citizens. And HIV-infected citizens will be able to receive assistance at the Moscow City AIDS Center. However, according to the response of the Moscow Department of Health to the request of the head of Rospotrebnadzor, the AIDS MGC has the right to refuse nonresident citizens to attach.

Now at the dispensary observation in the center of Pokrovsky are 1.2 thousand patients, 989 people receive therapy. There are patients from the distant regions of Russia - from the Far East, the Urals, from Siberia.

That is, it turns out that in the country, according to WHO estimates, on the verge of an HIV epidemic, more than a thousand HIV-infected people find themselves without guaranteed assistance. Officials say that no one deprives the help of these people - they just should receive it at the place of permanent registration. This means that you need to quit work in Moscow and return to the small homeland with all the ensuing prospects, or rather, losses.

And what, the Ministry of Health really believe that these sick people will really go to be treated at the place of registration?

The question arises: would it be equally easy to have a departmental solution if it was a thousand cholera patients? This is also a deadly infection, moreover, great contagious. Would they also be advised to leave for their homeland to be treated or would they have urgently take measures?

Meanwhile, even a slight interruption of antiretroviral therapy can significantly worsen the state of a person and, even worse, develop resistance, that is, insensitivity to the drug that took the infected. According to Pokrovsky, the total number of HIV-positive nonresident citizens in the capital can be up to 20 thousand people. At the same time, only 1087 Nemoskvichs are attached to the Moscow Center of AIDS, half of them receives medicines.

In the Ministry of Health, they refer to the fact that the problem with the drug provision of visiting patients in the regions of the country should decide when the federal register of patients with HIV will work.

And the statement of the Ministry of Health that people with HIV from the federal center will be able to receive help at the Moscow AIDS center, looks very doubtful. None of those patients who were sued due to refusal to treat there, the court won.