Persons living with HIV/Aids decry ARV stock outs in health facilities

Persons Living with HIV/Aids have decried the persistent stock outs of ARVs in several health facilities across the country.

They claim for the last four to five months there has been a crisis of absence of third-line ARVs and patients have experienced a lot of difficulties in adhering to the life saving treatment.

The ministry of Health however refuted the allegations.

Addressing the media yesterday, People Living with HIV/Aids and civil society organisations said the ARV shortage had directly affected over 2,500 patients in this category.

They said whenever they visit health facilities to get these drugs they are either given second line ARV drugs or sent away by medical workers.

Third line drugs such as Raltegravir and Darunavir are said to have run out in many facilities putting patients at risk of getting opportunistic infections due to their comprised immunity.

Emmanuel Ainebyona, the spokesperson of ministry of Health said there was no such scarcity and all health facilities have the necessary drugs.

He said the only time they had challenges in distribution was when the National Medical Stores was undergoing stocktaking between June and July but the situation has since normalised.

"The entire ARVs chain [first, second and third line] is available. May be the alleged stock out was when NMS was stocktaking between June 24 and July 15th," Ainebyoona said.

Uganda has over 1.5 million people living with HIV and many of these are enrolled onto ARVs.