Network of Naga People Living with HIV/AIDS (NNP+) and NNagaDao have appealed to the health & family welfare (H&FW) department to exempt medical officers and nurse of ART Plus Centre, Dimapur from COVID-19 duty.
Interacting with media persons here on Sunday afternoon, NNP+ president Lanu Aier said people living with HIV (PLHIV) acknowledged all medical officers, nurses and frontline workers for their tireless work in combating COVID-19 pandemic. They observed that the pandemic had impacted the entire health department as almost every staff was taking active part in trying to contain the spread of the virus.
Aier, however, reminded that the PLHIV community was also in need of services and treatment from ART doctors as they could not go to other doctors in private hospitals to avail treatment, insisting that the health department should not neglect PLHIV, TB patients or drug users because of the pandemic.
He regretted that as the two ART centre doctors at Dimapur were assigned COVID duty, there was no doctor now to treat PLHIV, due to which more than 1,000 patients had “miscase”. He demanded that the H&FW department should stop its step-motherly treatment.
Aier regretted that the development had come despite NNP+ and Nagaland State AIDS Control Society (NSACS) having had jointly written a letter to the department, requesting exemption of doctors and nurses of Dimapur ART Plus Centre so that they could provide treatment and services to PLHIV needing medical attention.
ART Foundation president Ketho Angami remarked that COVID was here to stay and therefore insisted that the department should focus on creating awareness on how to adapt and live along with the virus while treating COVID patients. Demanding that PLHIV, TB patients, drug users or other related sick patients should not be neglected due to the current crisis, he pointed out that TB was even more serious than COVID and that TB patients were vulnerable to COVID. Ketho claimed that in some districts the constituent unit people were volunteering to deliver medicines door-to-door and demanded that some doctors should be relieved to take care of such patients.
He alleged that HIV tests had drastically reduced in almost all districts, adding that there were reports of induction of police personnel in Opioid Substitution Therapy (OPT) during the lockdown.
NNagaDao president Abou Mere informed newsmen that his organisation had also written a letter to the H&FW department requesting not to put ART centre doctors on COVID-19 duty, though there was no response from the department.
He appealed to the H&FW department not to deprive treatment to vulnerable section of people or abandon them, insisting that PLHIV, TB patients and drug users should be given equal attention like people suffering from other ailments.
According to the information provided by the organisations, 29 new PLHIV registered for HIV care in May this year.