SYDNEY: As an HIV positive woman from Papua New Guinea, Maura Elaripe Mea knows the harsh realities of living with the virus in a developing country.
She has seen AIDS patients left untreated because doctors feared it would be a waste of drugs, and she knows many others do not seek help simply because they cannot afford a bus ticket to the nearest clinic.
When she was first diagnosed eight years ago, the former nurse said the treatment of AIDS patients by medics was appalling.
“The treatment was shocking in the early years, the nurses and doctors didn't know about HIV,” she said.
“There was a woman who died (in hospital) and they put her in a black plastic bag. Right in front of me.
“I said, 'Why did they put in her in the bag?' and they said to me, ‘Nobody is going to come and get her, she is HIV’. That really freaked me out. I thought, are they going to do the same to me?” Elaripe herself almost died in December 2002 but was saved when friends raised money to buy her generic drugs. She believes the fact that she was living in the capital Port Moresby, rather than a remote province where medication would not have been available, saved her life.
“If I was in other areas I would have died,” she said ahead of a major HIV/AIDS conference in Sydney which opened on Sunday.
Now 31, Elaripe has dedicated herself to lobbying for those living with HIV. She is one of 5,000 delegates from around the world attending the July 22-25 International AIDS Society conference in Sydney which will discuss cutting edge developments in HIV/AIDS research.
She said while huge improvements have been made since she was diagnosed, the powerful anti-retroviral drugs used to prolong her life should be more readily available in developing countries.
“What I personally would like to see is the drugs rolled out as far as the health centres in the villages,” she said.
She also wants greater access to newer, less toxic, more expensive versions of the treatments.
“I am hoping, especially looking at my region, the Asia-Pacific region, that there will be a positive outcome — the scaling up of second-line drugs,” she said of the conference.
“I've been on first-line (drugs) for a couple of years and I believe I am developing a resistance.” Michel Kazatchine, who heads the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, said there had been tremendous advancements in the numbers of HIV patients in the developing world who had access to retroviral drugs, from several hundred thousand in 2001 to more than two million currently.
But he said the major problem will come four to eight years down the track when those HIV carriers begin to develop resistance to the first line of drugs.
Kazatchine said the cost of providing second and third stage drugs to the developing world would be an enormous burden and could lead to medics having to choose between treating the newly infected and long-term patients.
“I personally think that we need to solve the issue of drugs costs before we face any possible dilemma of having to choose between continuing treating those who we started on treatment or bringing in new patients,” he said.
Debrework Zewdie, director of the Global HIV/AIDS Programme for the World Bank, said while vast improvements had been made, much more needed to be done.—AFP