Bassem Magdy-Cairo
There are 16,000 people living with HIV in Egypt, who are offered free treatment by the state, but they also face some false beliefs in society.
The World Health Organization (WHO) organized a World AIDS Day celebration on Tuesday (December 1st) in cooperation with UNAIDS and the Egyptian Ministry of Health, under the slogan "Show, examine, favor your side".
The Director of the Joint United Nations Program on AIDS, Dr. Ahmed Khamis during the celebration that Egypt is one of the countries with low rates of AIDS in all population groups, with a pandemic concentrated in certain categories more vulnerable to infection, stressing that Egypt aims to eliminate AIDS by 2030.
In an exclusive statement to Al-Jazeera Net, Khamis said there were about 16,000 people living with HIV in Egypt by the end of 2017, a rough figure because the real number can not be known because there are people who are unaware of HIV infection.
He added that the Egyptian Ministry of Health figures numbers of people living with HIV who have tested in their central labs that they are pregnant with HIV, and expected the issuance of new figures for people living with AIDS early next year.
Yasser (a pseudonym) - a patient who discovered HIV infection when undergoing minor surgery at a state hospital - said that for an inexplicable reason, the hospital administration decided to send the results of the tests to his employer. Yasser refused to raise a case to demand the return to work for fear of spreading the news of his injury.
Yasser has been in treatment for three years and has no health problems. "As long as your health is good when you know about your injury and you are in therapy, your health will remain good," he said.
Discharge treatment
According to Yasir, 30, the virus is being treated monthly from the Ministry of Health's free diet hospital, the only one in Egypt to provide this type of treatment. Those who refuse to take treatment should find a way to buy treatment from abroad.
Yasir receives two types of drugs - Truvada and Efavirenz - from a Ministry of Health diet hospital. These hospitals do not have modern medicines that combine triple drugs into a single pill such as Atripla.
Dr. Khamis said in his speech to Al Jazeera Net that the medicines offered in Egypt are very good and adhere to the universal protocol of treatment according to the recommendations of the World Health Organization. They contain the same substances that are similar to those abroad, which are imported by the Ministry of Health free of charge for people living with HIV. He pointed out that the new drugs are not offered in Egypt so far.
Yasir is currently facing no problems with treatment. The problem lies in the medical tests that the virus carrier is supposed to do every six months, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations to make sure the virus is low in blood and the immune cells are high.
These tests are sometimes not available in hospitals of the Ministry of Health, and are often delayed results, some resorted to the private investigators, and these analyzes are expensive or unavailable, and the patient has to disclose his illness.
According to Hossam (a pseudonym) - one of the people infected with the virus and activists in awareness campaigns - he notes a significant increase in cases of detection of the disease.
Hossam, 25, said that in the past, the patient was not known to have been infected unless he was tested on the virus when traveling to a Gulf country, or had a strange disease or opportunistic disease that accompanied the deterioration of the immune system. Now, some groups at risk are now accepting HIV testing.
ignorance
In an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera Net, Dr. Ihab Al-Kharrat, a psychiatrist and director of one of the special treatment centers for addiction and one of the most prominent advocates of the rights of people living with AIDS, explained that HIV is transmitted only through sexual relations, blood transfusion or breast milk, Pregnant with virus and healthy person.
According to Kharrat, there is a lot of ignorance and misconceptions about AIDS, which even some doctors in Egypt might think.
He pointed out that doctors should take precautionary precautions when dealing with patients in any surgery, and to carry out virus tests for them anyway.
Dr. Ahmed Ali Aljazeera.net said that he does not mind dealing with the virus carriers. The virus is known for its transmission. It takes precautionary precautions and understands the concern of its fellow doctors when dealing with them because it is a disease without cure.
According to Khamis, there is a great response from doctors in dealing with AIDS patients, where the Ministry of Health is working to disseminate the correct information among doctors about the transmission of HIV.
He confirmed that the standard infection control procedures in all hospitals of the Ministry of Health protect the doctor, providing him with "post-exposure preventive treatment" under which the doctor who is suspected to have been exposed to the virus to receive preventive treatment within 72 hours.
Dr. Ahmed Abdel Halim, a doctor at the Ministry of Health, disagrees with his Facebook page, which was stabbed with a needle from an HIV patient during surgery. He says he suffered post-exposure prophylactic treatment so he could provide a preventive dose From a hospital for diets.
In his summary of his experience, Abdul Halim told doctors that AIDS patients are very numerous and the Ministry of Health will not protect them. "It will give you treatment." He advised them to secure themselves because no one would benefit if they were infected, he said.