>From Mark Storey,
Fyi.
Bob Pyke Jr.,RN,CPNP
Romania To Stop Medication For 10,000 HIV Patients
BUCHAREST, Oct 4, 1999 -- (Reuters) Lack of funds will force Romanian
health authorities to interrupt free medication for 10,000 people
infected with the deadly HIV virus, including more than 8,700 children, a
health official said on Friday.
"In two, three days we will stop supplying medicines to our patients,
both adults and children, as we have no funds to buy them," doctor
Vladimir Strainu, manager of Bucharest's hospital for infectious
diseases, told reporters.
The Health Ministry lost the equivalent of $30 million, including almost
$10 million for the national AIDS program, under cuts in the 1999 budget
revision last month.
"Interrupting the treatment for a couple of days would ruin everything we
achieved so far and endanger the life of our patients, most of whom are
children," added Strainu, who also heads Romania's national AIDS-fighting
commission.
"These children were infected through improper medical care in the late
1980s and the authorities must support the cost of their treatment,"
Strainu said.
Romania accounts for more than half of Europe's juvenile cases of
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), a communist-era legacy of
poor sanitation and unscreened blood which caused the infection of
thousands of children.
Latest data show that 3,564 children are infected with HIV and another
5,179 have developed full-blown AIDS. One third of children with AIDS are
institutionalized, the rest living in their families or in foster homes.
Strainu put his hospital's debts at $3.5 million, half of which he said
was the cost of medicines for 1,400 AIDS patients. Monthly treatment per
patient is around $1,200, he said.
Romania, which ambitions to get access to the European Union, has come
under severe criticism from the EU over bad conditions for thousands of
children in orphanages, many of them suffering from AIDS.
Last month, the EU granted 39 million euros in emergency donation for the
government, with the U.S. also contributing $14 million, and France
another four million francs.
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