Amendments to AIDS law pushed

MANILA, Philippines – Lawmakers are pushing for amendments to the 13-year-old AIDS Prevention and Control Law as the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) has spread faster, infecting seven Filipinos every 24 hours.

Reps. Ma. Isabelle Climaco (Zamboanga City), Janette Garin (Iloilo), Jorge Banal (Quezon City), Arlene Bag-ao (Akbayan party-list), and Arnel Ty (LPGMA party-list) jointly authored House Bill 5312 or the proposed Comprehensive AIDS Prevention, Treatment, Care and Support Policy and Plan Act of 2011 that seeks to put in certain amendments to Republic Act 8054 in a bid to suppress the highly contagious disease that destroys the human body’s immune system.

They noted that a decade ago the HIV, which causes Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome or AIDS, infected one Filipino every 72 hours. But now it infects seven Filipinos every 24 hours. AIDS has no known cure.

The measure aims to implement “forceful strategies” to the hold back the spread of the virus, the authors said.

Besides energizing the multi-sectoral Philippine National AIDS Council (PNAC), the bill’s new approaches include the immediate installation of Local AIDS Councils with forceful and concentrated action plans at the regional, provincial, city and municipal levels.

The bill also allots P400 million to jumpstart a new National HIV and AIDS Plan with definite strategies, operating guidelines, and targets.

“Public funding for AIDS prevention and control has actually declined from P81 million in 2009 to just P65 million in the proposed 2012 national budget,” Ty said.

“This cutback is deplorable, considering we are one of only seven countries in the world where new HIV cases are rapidly increasing amid a global slowdown,” he said.

The World Health Organization has expressed concern that while HIV seems to be generally slowing down in many parts of the world, it appears to be growing at an alarming rate in the Philippines and six other countries — Armenia, Bangladesh, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.

“That HIV is infecting seven Filipinos every day is actually an understatement. We are talking here only of cases passively detected, since compulsory HIV-testing is prohibited by law to prevent discrimination of HIV-positive people, and rightly so,” Ty said.

He said the proposed bill that he and his colleagues introduced has clear-cut mandates for specific agencies to provide certain programs meant to alleviate the conditions of the growing number of Filipinos living with HIV.

“We wish to assure every Filipino living with HIV adequate treatment and long-term care, welfare assistance, and social protection,” he said.

“In our bill, a case-management mechanism will be in place for every person living with HIV. Affected families, including children orphaned by AIDS, will also be provided extra care and support,” he added.

From January to July this year, a total of 1,220 new HIV cases were diagnosed in the country, up 30 percent versus the 940 detected over the same seven-month period in 2010.

The figures include an unprecedented 204 new cases spotted in July alone, or seven per day.

The National HIV and AIDS Registry lists a total of 7,235 cases since passive surveillance of the disease began in 1984.

These include 884 full-blown AIDS patients, 327 of whom have since succumbed to the disease.

Nine out of every 10 cases in the registry acquired the infection as a result of unprotected sexual contact. The rest were infected via contaminated needle-sharing among illicit drug users, mother-to-child conveyance, tainted blood transfusion, needle prick injuries, or had no reported mode of transmission.

The PNAC has warned that some 46,000 Filipinos could be diagnosed with HIV by 2015, unless the spread of the disease is effectively checked.

At the rate new cases are being discovered, the Philippine government may have to spend up to P1 billion yearly by 2015, just to procure the anti-retroviral drugs needed to treat Filipinos with HIV, according to Dr. Edsel Salvana, a specialist in infectious disease medicine.

Although AIDS still has no known cure, aggressive and expensive treatments can slow the advance of the disease. –Paolo Romero (The Philippine Star)