E-DRUG: Thailand promises ART for all
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[After Brazil and Botswana, Thailand has now become the third
developing
country to introduce anti-retroviral treatment in the public sector.
The locally
produced cocktail costs USD 624 per person per year.
Who is next? Happy World AIDS Day to all of you. I care; do you?? NN]
Thailand to include AIDS treatment in subsidized state health care
plan
By UAMDAO NOIKORN
Associated Press Writer
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - Thailand's government on Friday bowed to
AIDS patients' demands to provide them treatment under a government
program that offers medicare for 30 baht (70 U.S. cents) per hospital
visit. Addressing about 300 HIV patients protesting in front of the
government headquarters, Public Health Minister Sudarat Keyurapan
said the government has decided in principle to put AIDS treatment in
the medicare program next year.
The announcement is a triumph for 1 million Thais suffering from HIV
or AIDS, who have campaigned for government medical help since the
30-baht program was launched April 1. The program will initially
cover those showing symptoms of the disease. The plan, one of Prime
Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's nine populist promises that won him a
landslide victory in January elections, began April 1 as a pilot
project in six provinces and went nationwide in October. It aims to
cover 46.6 million of Thailand's 62 million people who have no
private health insurance. The program's beneficiaries pay 30 baht (70
cents) every time they visit a hospital to be eligible for
consultation, treatment and medicines for almost every disease except
AIDS and kidney dialysis.
"We're very happy that the government finally looked at our plight,"
said Paisal Tan-Utra, president of Thai Network for People Living
with HIV and AIDS. A working committee comprising all parties
concerned would be set up to oversee the progress. The first talks
are expected to start next month or in January, Paisal said. His
group is staging an all-day rally with activities in front of
Government House to mark World AIDS Day on Saturday.
Paisal said the government bowed to the demand after talks between the
representatives of the protesters and minister Sudarat, who was
accompanied by the heads of the Communicable Disease Control
Department and the Government Pharmaceutical Organization. Sudarat
said the ministry would double the anti-AIDS budget to 500 million
baht (dlrs 11 million) next year. Under the deal, each patient would
receive the locally made AIDS cocktail drug worth 2,310 baht (dlrs
52) every month.
"The budget could cover about 6,000 to 7,000 AIDS
patients and the rest would join soon," said Sudarat. At present,
most HIV-positive people are left untreated as they cannot afford the
drugs despite the government's effort to cut costs by producing some
of the cheapest ones locally. Thailand is credited with bringing down
the rate of HIV/AIDS infection by 80 percent after a massive
awareness and condom distribution campaign in the early 1990s.
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