HIV Patients In Danger Over Pharmacists Strike

Dr Stephen Addo, Programme Manager of the National AIDS Control Programme, has called on the government to, as a matter of urgency, listen to the hospital pharmacists who are currently on strike and try to resolve their grievances so they could resume work.

Members of the Government Hospital Pharmacists Association (GHOSPA) have laid down their tools in protest of their employer's inability to meet their demands.

GHOSPA has been battling the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) over unfair placement on the single spine salary structure, payment of market premium and poor working conditions.

According to Dr Addo, the pharmacists' strike is adversely affecting drug dispensing, particularly that of those living with HIV/AIDS in the various government health facilities in the country.

“I am, therefore, pleading with the government to listen to the pharmacists and do its best to resolve the matter,” he pointed out.

Dr Addo was speaking at the launching of the Western Regional Operational Plan for the Scaling up of Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission (PMTCT), Early Infant Diagnosis (EID) and Paediatric HIV Services in Takoradi.

He also appealed to the striking pharmacists not to withhold services from persons living with HIV.

Dr Addo mentioned that when someone has malaria and a pharmacist refuses to give that person artesunate-amodiaquine for the treatment of the disease, the sick person could go to a drug store to purchase the drug.

“When someone gets tuberculosis, there are nurses who could administer their drugs, but when it comes to the anti-retroviral therapy for HIV patients, if a pharmacist or any dispensing authority is not around, people with HIV will be denied treatment,” he stressed.

Dr Addo stated that “the anti-retroviral therapy is the one that must not be interrupted. Once you start it, you don't have to stop because there are risks of the clients developing resistance.”

He revealed that there are some pregnant women with the disease who are on medication, “but since the strike started, those pregnant women have been denied treatment. So I want to appeal to the pharmacists to give certain concern to persons living with HIV. We continue to look up to government to increase support for basic commodities, including anti-retroviral therapy and test kits for HIV response in the country.”

For his part, Dr Emmanuel Tinkorang, Western Regional Director of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), disclosed the four approaches to reducing mother-to-child transmission of HIV.

“The first is preventing HIV from the general population, the second is going through HIV testing and counselling and those who are positive are given treatment.

The third is to encourage HIV mothers to undergo family planning and the fourth is prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV.”

He pointed out that the PMTCT remains a major intervention in addressing HIV/AIDS problem during pregnancy and that the early infant diagnosis is done for children whose mothers are HIV positive.

Dr Addo indicated that children who are found to be positive would then be given treatment so that they can survive and live a normal life.

He revealed that through the sentinel surveillance usually carried out by health professionals in the region, HIV prevalence in the area reduced from 2.5 percent in 2014 to 2.0 percent in 2015.

Dr Roland Sowa, Regional HIV Coordinator, revealed that the HIV prevalence rate among pregnant women in the region in 2004 was 4.6 percent and that over the years, the number had gone down.

FROM Emmanuel Opoku, Takoradi