LOOKING at her in the crowd of protesters at the ARV Clinic at the Adeoyo Maternity, Yemetu, Ibadan, Oyo State, it was obvious that the issue at stake was a matter of life and death. The protesters carried placards with the inscription, ‘No to Tyonex!’ ‘People with HIV are dying’, and so on.
Bose Ajamu, a mother of two and a peer counsellor at the US Presidential Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) Clinic, University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, was one of the scores of HIV patients who converged on the health facility to protest continued supply and administration of Tyonex, a brand of ARV medicines containing Zidovudine, Lamivudine and Nevirapine.
While she could not disclose exactly how she got infected with HIV, Mrs Ajamu, a Nigeria Certificate in Education (NCE) holder, said she tested positive to the dreaded virus in 2003 at the age of 22. Although, her 20-year-old son is aware of her mother’s HIV status, his six-year-old young brother could only recall seeing his mother always taking pills every day after breakfast.
“Every woman should be tested for HIV so that they can prevent their babies from being HIV-positive. If we really want to have an HIV-free country, we need to screen all pregnant women. This should be voluntary and those that test positive to HIV be made to access care to, at least, protect the newborn from contracting the virus,” she said.
Although societal support is very important in preventing stigmatisation and thus ensuring that people living with the virus can openly declare their HIV status, Ajamu said it was important that husbands of women that test positive to HIV should also support their wives to live positively with their condition.
Mrs Abimbola Martin, who tested positive to HIV in 2000, said she joined the protest following her narrow escape from death middle of December, 2013 (after prolonged ingestion of the drug). She said she would have died if she had not received quick help at International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa (ICASA) meeting in South Africa.
Mrs Martin told Saturday Tribune that she had commenced HIV treatment over 13 years ago when she started vomiting and her vomit was laced with blood. And Although she told her doctors at the PEPFAR clinic, where she had received another consignment of ARV to last for four months about her poor appetite, dizzy spells and fatigue, they did not discourage her from travelling to South Africa for this HIV-related conference.
She said, “When I started vomiting blood on the third day at ICASA, they did not believe me. Eventually, a medical doctor came to test me and in putting his hand into my mouth, I started vomiting again. The vomit had blood in it and I was rushed in an ambulance to the hospital,” she recounted the genesis of several tests linking her symptoms to the ARV treatment she was placed on.
“They asked me to stop the ARVs I had with me from Nigeria. This was replaced with a new set of ARVs and they warned me against taking the ARVs collected at UCH, Ibadan.”
Mrs Martin, whose CD4 count had dropped from over 800 to about 300, said she started noticing a difference in her health a week after the change made in the brand of her ARV medication.
Addressing people watching the protest at the hospital, Mr Obatunde Oladapo, the National Coordinator, Treatment Action Movement Nigeria (a coalition of treatment activists that advocate for quality ARV treatment), said it was to demand for the withdrawal of Tyonex, a brand of ARV from HIV treatment clinics.
Mr Oladapo, who said a lot had been done to ensure that the brand of ARV is withdrawn from use, said the body decided to come to the hospital to personally cart away all consignments of the offensive ARV to prevent its being further dispensed for use by people living with HIV.
Among steps taken on the issue, according to him, were a press conference organised in October, 2013, a letter written to the Federal Ministry of Health as well as dialogues at the ICASA with the Health Minister, Professor Onyebuchi Chukwu, on the purported substandard ARV.
“Many of our colleagues taking this brand of ARV lately have been complaining that their health have been deteriorating since they started using it,” Oladapo said.
Part of the complaints against the drug, according to him, include the ARV’s poor packaging, conflicting information on the leaflets, its bitter taste (unlike other brands of ARVs) and its brittleness.
Mr Oladapo insiste that the Health Ministry must withdraw the brand of ARV, which he claimed did not meet the World Health Organisation (WHO)’s prequalification standard for essential drugs.
Oladapo said further: “They cannot be spending billions of naira and MDG funds to procure it and they are forcing us as Nigerians to take it. We have complained but they did not do anything concrete about it. We met them again in Cape Town, South Africa, at a meeting that also had international partners and the government. The government promised they were going to withdraw this ARV from our clinic immediately.
“While we were burying one of our colleagues, Gloria Nwagnuwe, in Asaba last Friday, we heard it from a good authority that the Health Minister insisted they should continue giving Tyonex until he has ample proof that it is bad. We are asking: does he want us to see more people dead?
“We will continue to seize Tyonex in any clinic where we find it until the government listens to us. We are also asking the government to dialogue with us on other issues affecting ARV programme in the country.
“It may be business to them, but it is our lives. Our lives are at stake and we are not going to allow anyone send us to early graves in droves.”
However, early at the Adeoyo Hospital, one of medical doctors attending to patients at the HIV clinic, Dr Folake Adurogbola, declared that nobody had come to complain about Tyonex, adding that the brand of ARV was what was supplied to the clinic.
“If there had been feedbacks from our clients on this drug, it would have been changed,” Dr Adurogbola assured.
Also, Dr Soji Adeyanju, the Site Coordinator of the APIN programme at the Adeoyo Maternity Hospital, said “The programme is going through a phase that will negatively impact the successes of the programme.”
The health minister in a reaction sent to Saturday Tribune via SMS said “The drug was duly registered by the National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC). All medicines distributed or sold in Nigeria must be registered by NAFDAC. For drugs supplied by Global Fund, in addition to NAFDAC registration, they are usually prequalified by WHO. The ARV drug in question was procured by the Federal Government; so it required only NAFDAC’s registration.
“Laboratory tests so far conducted by NAFDAC (with international observers) on the drug shows that the drug is safe and meets the standards that initially qualified it for NAFDAC’s registration. However, the investigations of the death of a PLWHA (Person Living With HIVAIDS) who was on the drug and of the drug itself are still ongoing.
“Meanwhile, the regulatory authority (NAFDAC) has suspended further dispensing and use of the drug pending the conclusion of the investigations.
This is with effect from last week Thursday. I am not aware of any fund meant for the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA) that was diverted to the ministry. NACA is not under the Ministry of Health.”
Source: Tribune
