Shocked by gross negligence from the health ministry for failing to address severe shortage of HIV-AIDS and TB drugs under the respective programme, healthcare experts have demanded the government to remove health secretary from his post for overlooking his duties.  They stressed that lack of any action from the health secretary has clearly put life of scores of vulnerable patients across the country to risk.

Since these drugs are expensive, the government through tender provides more than one-third of India's 2.1 million HIV/AIDS patients with free antiretroviral drugs. It was recently exposed that due to severe lapse in administrative process, the country is in risk of running out of its free HIV/AIDS drugs programme soon, leaving more than 150,000 sufferers without life-saving drugs for about a month.

It is understood that the government in spite of repeated intimation from the organisations like NACO and other bodies repeatedly overlooked their demands and warnings, resulting in gross shortage of drugs. Healthcare experts stressed that rather than beefing up the existing system by simplifying the matter, they are just further embroiling the whole process under lopsided bureaucratic process delaying the supply of life-saving drugs to patients in time.

Rajendra Pratap Gupta, president, Disease Management Association of India (DMAI) said that it is a shameful and severe lapse of duty on the part of the government as non-availability of such life-saving drugs may lead to huge repercussions on not only the patients in question but also to the society as well. “While the government should have been more proactive in addressing this issue in a tactful manner, it also highlights how ill prepared we are in handling crisis. What surprises me the most is that it shows how vulnerable the patients in India are, rather than having a buffer stock to address such a huge demand, the country's healthcare system fails to even address basic demands of its patients,” Gupta stressed.

He further pointed out that the government needs to beef up its existing system with a more systematic and trained worked force capable of handling and executing work properly. It is ironic and embarrassing how they afford to overlook something so important as missed dosages for long durations can increase patients' drug resistance and result in faster spread of the virus, while changes in medication regimens expose patients to side effects.

“Recently, there has been widespread talk about India failing to take care of the needs of HIV/AIDS patients. Time and again, this has happened for TB patients as well. This is nothing short of mass killing of vulnerable people. I request the health minister to immediately remove the heath secretary and the officials responsible for this failure, as no one can be allowed to play with the lives of people,” Gupta demanded.