IHRA directs all ICT hospitals to treat HIV patients

ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad Healthcare Regulatory Authority (IHRA) Tuesday directed all the healthcare establishments in the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) to provide the best of treatment to the HIV positive patients similar to the patients of any other disease.

The health authority issued the directions after reports that the private healthcare facilities were denying treatment to the HIV patients.

“The Islamabad Healthcare Regulatory Authority has observed with grave concern that the healthcare establishments in Islamabad, including leading tertiary-care hospitals, are denying treatment to the HIV positive patients due to the stigma attached with the disease, even in cases where HIV positive patients require hospitalization,” the IHRA said in a letter sent to all public and private hospitals in the capital.

The letter — signed by Deputy Director Dr. Syed Khurram Raza — said in case any healthcare establishment lacked expertise, it could contact the IHRA for assistance and guidance, adding that the matter may please be treated on top priority basis.

Talking to The News, a senior official of the Authority said they had not only written letters to the healthcare facilities to end this kind of discrimination but also spoke to the administrations of some leading private hospitals and asked them not to deny treatment to any patient, especially the HIV positive people.

“Some leading tertiary-care health facilities, which were not entertaining HIV positive patients in life-threatening conditions, have assured us that they would change their policy immediately”, the IHRA official said, adding that they would keep an eye on the healthcare establishments in this regard.

Officials in the Sindh health department on the other hand claimed that Sindh was the only province which had passed a law for protection of the HIV positive people, saying Sindh HIV and AIDS Control, Treatment and Protection ACT 2013 provided complete protection to the HIV positive people against stigma and discrimination.

“Majority of public and private hospitals in Sindh don’t discriminate against the positive people on the basis of their health condition. Some of the health facilities may have referred the HIV positive patients to tertiary-care facilities due to lacking infectious diseases experts, medicines and diagnostic facilities,” an official of the Sindh health department said.

The official said all the public health facilities, including the Civil Hospital Karachi, Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center, Sindh Infectious Diseases Hospital as well as SIUT, Aga Khan Hospital and other tertiary-care hospitals, were providing symptomatic treatment, hospitalization and intensive care facilities to the HIV positive patients.

“If a person or health official discriminates against any HIV positive person on the basis of his or her health condition, he or she may be fined besides other punitive actions as per the provincial law,” he warned.

Earlier, it emerged that all the private hospitals in Islamabad and other major cities of Pakistan, including the leading tertiary-care health facilities, were denying treatment to the HIV-positive people due to the stigma attached to the disease, even in cases where the patients needed hospitalization and treatment for life-threatening conditions.

Experts said although majority of HIV patients were treated in OPDs, the only option left to them for treatment in Islamabad was the infectious diseases department of the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS), Islamabad.

Led by Prof. Nasim Akhtar, an infectious diseases expert, the PIMS ID department is a small unit which remains over-burdened due to the HIV patients from Islamabad, as well as Rawalpindi and some other cities, as most of the private health facilities refer them to PIMS.

In Islamabad, 50 new HIV cases are being reported on average every month. In 2022, 584 people new cases were reported to the HIV treatment centre at PIMS and Polyclinic.

Officials at the National Aids Control Programme (NACP) claim that new HIV cases being reported in Islamabad are also from different areas of Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan.

Renowned infectious diseases expert Dr Faisal Sultan believes that the stigma attached to HIV is one of the reasons why private health facilities refuse to treat the HIV-positive people.

According to him, Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) is not a major issue preventing private health facilities from taking HIV-positive people.

“HIV needs nothing special for that. Its expertise in care is the issue. Even diagnostics are provided free by aids control programmes”, Dr. Faisal Sultan said adding that if a hospital has an Infectious Diseases Physician, it must treat HIV-positive people.

Another known infectious diseases expert associated with Aga Khan University Hospital Karachi Dr. Faisal Mehmood also believes that stigma is the major reason behind discrimination against the HIV positive people, saying Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) has nothing to do with denial of healthcare services to the HIV patients.

“Mostly stigma is the reason behind the refusal to treat the HIV patients by private health facilities. The IPC protocols for HIV are the same as for a non-HIV patient. They are called standard precautions which assume every patient admitted has Hep-B, HCV and HIV,” Dr. Faisal Mehmood observed.