That there’s another possible shortage of antiretroviral medicines (ARVs) for people living with HIV (PLHIVs) in the Philippines is this on-and-off issue in the local HIV community. That is, we hear about it… and then we wait for it to happen… and then it happens or it doesn’t… and then we seem to forget about it. And then the cycle starts again.
But I will say that since it DOES happen, though at different times for PLHIVs in different hubs, this is something that the HIV community should actually always highlight. Even if – for now – it doesn’t. And for me, to make the community care about this more than they currently do, we need to teach people to start acting now… even when we’re not yet directly affected by it, and not wait until the problem becomes so big we’re all already drowning in the problem.
I’m saying this because a few weeks ago, ARV shortage was already mentioned to us. Yeah, some people did talk about it… but to enough, if you ask me. Mainly because the last time I checked (i.e. last week), some hubs still give out less ARVs than they usually do (one bottle versus the “usual” three bottles).
Upon closer look, I checked contacts in socmed – e.g. in Twitter, some apparently already raised this issue as early as February; and then there are those who now complain that they’re being given ARVs only for two weeks (14 tablets).
In CDO now, PLHIVs (at least those I know) still get three bottles per refill. If I lived in an it-doesn’t-affect-me world, it’s so easy to say that the ARV shortage is not really OUR problem. But… isn’t it?
We need to start raising this as an issue now, even when it hasn’t affected all PLHIVs yet (apparently). Because if it remains unsolved, then yes, it WILL eventually affect all PLHIVs (just as it did before).
Let’s not wait to act until the systemic errors happen to us. Let’s act now so it doesn’t happen to anyone at all. That’s how we should always approach this… or any of the issues in the HIV community.
