Multi-month prescription, home delivery for uninterrupted AIDS drugs in times of Covid-19

Within days of China locking down Wuhan and other cities in coronavirus disease -hit Hubei province on January 23, and India confirming its first case in Kerala on January 30, officials from UNAIDS and National AIDS Control Organisation went into a huddle in New Delhi to ensure an uninterrupted supply of HIV services, which are offered free to everyone who needs them under the national Aids control programme. There are 2.1 million people living with HIV in India, with new infections rising in Assam, Mizoram, Meghalaya and Uttarakhand, and declining in Nagaland, Manipur, Delhi and Chhattisgarh. “When Covid-19 was first reported in India, we put our heads together with NACO, civil society and PLHIVs to plan for contingencies such as the Wuhan lockdown, to mitigate the impact on critical HIV services, including ART delivery and harm reduction,” said Dr Bilali Camara, Unaids Country Director for India, who is a medical epidemiologist by training. UNAIDS has worked with NACO and ministry of health to take oral substitution therapy to injecting drug users in prescribed doses for two to three months,” said Camara.