Mindantoday.com | Health execs: NorMin loses 173 lives due to AIDS
By: Uriel Quilinguing
CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY – Ten persons living with human immunodeficiency virus (PLHIV) in Northern Mindanao had died due to acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) complications in September this year, according to the regional health agency’s disease surveillance unit.
This brought this year’s tally of deaths by AIDS from January to September to 53, so far, and a cumulative count of 173 since 1991 – the year the first HIV infection of a resident in the region was detected.
These were among the stats which Dr. Stephanie Zamora of the Department of Health-10 shared to an advocacy forum participants on the 34th World AIDS Day, December 1, in a hotel in Cagayan de Oro.
Zamora, who heads DOH-10’s Regional Epidemiology Surveillance and Disaster Response Unit (RESDRU), said that 96 percent or 2,455 of the 2,561 HIV/AIDS cases, as of September this year, are (or were) males, the remaining four percent are (were) females.
DOH-10 RESDRU data show that more than 60-percent of the males (by birth) contracted HIV by having sex with males, and more than half of them (1,317) belong to the 25-to-34-year-old age-bracket.
But HIV can be transmitted to anybody, regardless of age, through blood, semen, vaginal secretions, and breast milk.
One of the PLHIV patients at the Northern Mindanao Medical Center’s Health and Care Treatment (HaCT) Center is a 71-year old male, who may have caught the HIV over 30 years ago – perhaps ahead of NBA icon Earvin “Magic” Johnson, NMMC HIV/AIDS Core Team head Dr. Leslie Christine Salon said.
“Early detection and early treatment are the keys,” said Salon even as she praised the more than 2,500 college students from four educational institutions who took the three-day confidential pre-test counselling, screening, and testing at a mall, at no cost at all.
Student leaders from Xavier University-Ateneo de Cagayan who organized activities, including this forum, for the 34th WAD got the support of the DOH-10, City Health Office’s Social Hygiene Clinic, NMMC, and Pilipinas Shell Foundation, among others.
The HACT head said the NMMC is the only medical facility in the region that has the confirmatory capability for those whose blood in the HIV screening test was found reactive.
She assured all students who had undergone the screening utmost confidentiality of their test results, identities and other personal information.
“There is no cure for HIV/AIDS, but we have the anti-retroviral therapy (ART) which can prolong the lives of PLHIVs,” Salon said, adding that their septuagenarian patient is a living specimen, though hypertensive, diabetic, and with neuropathies.
With the 173 deaths, the region’s count of PLHIV in September was 2,388, but only 1,528 of them were into ART, as indicated the DOH-10 RESDRU statistical report.
This figure excludes those who had previously taken ART, those who have left the country, those who opted not to take ART anymore, and those who have left the country.
For October, the DOH Epidemiology Bureau’s HIV/AIDS & ART Registry of the Philippines (HAARP) tagged 46 more cases to Region 10, thus increasing the PLHIV count to 2,434. Disaggregated data on deaths per region for the month was not included. (MT)
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