The International Day of AIDS

This year the International Day of AIDS brougth to public attention the serious problems faced by those who are positive with AIDS.

In several counties, patients no longer receive medication because of the lack of money and they are forced to interrupt their treatment.

The consequences can be very severe: from the loss of chance to several years of normal life, to even death.

The counties from Moldova are confronting most of the problems in administrating the treatments.

The hospitals in several counties do not have money for medication anymore

Hospitals in Iaşi, Vaslui and Suceava do not afford anymore to buy medication for the patients infected with AIDS.

These medicines can not be found in pharmacies and this means that the patients can not procure them, so the Ministry Of Health needs to acquire money, Iulian Petre states, the president of the national Union of Patients infected with AIDS Organizations.

'There is a problem in Iasi, Suceava, Vaslui, I have been informed that they have problems.

Because of the low budget some hospitals do not afford to buy the entire treatment and some of the patients are affected. We struggle so that all the patients get the treatment, we hope that the National Health Insurance House, the Ministry of Health, even the Romanian Parliament will supply the funds for the treatment program.

'It is a priority for patients infected with AIDS, if they do not receive the treatment, it is useless to speak about professional integration or other beautiful things such as the quality of life', Iulian Petre said.

He says that if patients interrupt medication, they risk to develop resitance to treatment.

'By developing resistance they lose the chance to several years of life provided by that particular treatment, there are not many treatment regimens, and when patients are deprived of them because of the stammer in the system or any other reason, the body could not respond to some treatment regimens, they get vertiginously closer to the end of life', Iulian Petre also says.

The doctors from the Hospital of Infections Disease in Iasi did everything they could to get medication, and now they have a partnership even with the Church, to encourage and support the people who have AIDS, dr. Carmen Dorobăţ explains, the president of AIDS Regional Center of Iasi.

'We have 1.349 patients hospitalized at the level of Moldova, so they are not under treatment, because the treatment, financially speaking, is from county to county', Carmen Dorobat stated.

She mentions that a person who follows the treatment correctly has chances to live from 25 to 30 years.


Translated by FloreaMădălina and Diana Voicu
MA Student, MTTLC, Bucharest University