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India has the third largest number of HIV cases worldwide, with an estimated 21 lakh people living with HIV. Of these, around 15 lakh have been diagnosed and 10 lakh are on ART. According to a Lancet study, 1.96 lakh new cases emerged in 2015, and the number of people who died of AIDS-related complications is 1.3 lakh.

Civil society organisations complain that the government – especially the finance ministry – has failed to comprehend that in HIV/AIDS the treatment is prevention. They fear that stock outs of vital medicines and testing kits will force vulnerable people off their regimen, dissuade them from regular trips to far off hospitals and allow the virus to proliferate, possibly leading India back to the dark days when the epidemic struck first.

However, a larger cause of concern is the HIV/AIDS (Prevention and Control) Bill 2014, slated to be taken up by the Rajya Sabha in the current session.

Activists say that a line – “As far as possible” – inserted in Section 13 of the bill casts a shadow over the government’s responsibility to provide “diagnostic facilities relating to HIV or AIDS, anti-retroviral and opportunistic infections management to people living with HIV (PLHIV) or AIDS”.

Lawyers who helped draft the bill and public health workers fear this ambiguity will provide the government with an escape route whenever they have to be held accountable for the lack of necessary health care.

The Lawyers Collective was tasked with drafting the bill in 2002 and, since then, it has gone through “rigorous scrutiny”, say health professionals, with consultations from the PLHIV communities, grassroot health workers and organisations, state AIDS control boards, and also the government of India.

Already the country’s anti-HIV supply chain has been affected by funds not reaching state aids control societies on time. The situation in the national capital itself is alarming giving a glimpse to what could be happening in rural areas.

As the Delhi Network of Positive People (DNP+) listed out in an email to the National AIDS Control Organisation on November 17, hospitals across Delhi have run out of HIV testing kit 3, the highly accurate test used to diagnose infection in patients who have no symptoms but could be at risk. The email, according to the network came after a meeting with National Aids Control Programme’s (NACO) Director (Finance) Ajay Singh Chauhan on November 10, where he was apprised of the situation.
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