While the number of patients with AIDS/HIV is increasing day from day, medical practitioners are increasingly shying from handling and treating patients with AIDS/HIV. It is stated that patients with AIDS/HIV are having a harrowing time when it comes to availing treatment at both the government and private hospitals.

While doctors at government hospitals blatantly refuse to handle and treat such patients, private hospitals shy from treating them for fear of losing business. Though respective state governments are yet to come out with legislation mandating compulsive treatment of patients with AIDS/HIV they have been preaching against discrimination of treatment for such patients. Despite the preaching, patients with AIDS/HIV are made to run from pillar to post for availing treatment.

Though the awareness among doctors about AIDS/HIV has increased, they however refuse to treat such patients, again owing to the fear of losing other patients. The fear that other patients would refuse to come to them for treatment if the said doctor treated patients with AIDS/HIV is gaining momentum. Most doctors who practice independently refuse to treat patients with AIDS/HIV. Surprising factor is there are hardly a few doctors willing to treat patients with the dreaded disease.

Sources at the Government Institute of Thoracic Medicine (GITM), Chennai, perhaps the only hospital in the country specializing in treating patients with AIDS/HIVs, there is a growing fear among medical practitioners that they would be ostracized by the patients and the society if they treated such patients. "Leave apart awareness, medical practitioners are afraid of losing out on patients. As a result, they continue to shun patients with AIDS/HIV," the source added, claiming that the increased awareness about the disease and the spread of the disease has not done anything to change perceptions among the medical practitioners.

Says, Dr. Devanaiagan, former superintendent, GITM, "As long as medical practitioners continue to shun patients with AIDS/ HIV, these patients cannot avail of treatment. The only solution lies in brining about a legislation prescribing tough action for discriminating against these patients."

The fear of contracting the disease runs high among medical practitioners. The recent incidence of four doctors at the King Institute, Lucknow, contracting the disease has already created a flutter among the medical practitioners. Medical practitioners claim that they have no safeguard against contracting the disease, and hence their refusal to treat such patients.