Health News of Saturday, 5 December 2020

Source: starrfm.com.gh

Shortage of antiretroviral drugs hit Ashanti region

Ashanti Region has less antiretroviral medications Ashanti Region has less antiretroviral medications

Shortage of antiretroviral medications has hit the Ashanti Region, Starr News has learnt.

Persons Living with HIV have been moving across ART centres in various hospitals to no avail.

Starr News sources say there has been an emergency requisition sent by the Ashanti Regional Medical Stores to get some stock as a stopgap.

It is however unlikely how much the request would yield as most persons living with HIV/AIDS stock in three months advance to avoid defaulting.

This will be the umpteenth time this situation has happened this year the worst being within the lockdown period when patients had to bear the risk of travelling around in search of ARVs.

The Ghana National AIDS/STI Control Programme gave assurances that the medical stores had ordered shipment, to smoothen out the supply bottlenecks.

The PLHIVs are concerned defaulting in their medications intake, could soar their viral loads and derail their course towards viral suppression.