Singapore’s insistence on charging for HIV tests and treatment is hindering progress on controlling the spread of the virus in the city-state, said Francoise Barre- Sinoussi, winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Medicine for her co- discovery of the virus that causes AIDS.
New HIV infections in the nation of 4.6 million people rose to 456 in 2008 from 242 in 2003, according to the health ministry.
“The stigma, the fact that they have to pay for everything, it’s the worst conditions for stimulating people to be tested and treated,” she said in an interview and she added that The numbersmay be much more.
Singapore’s government has opened more anonymous testing clinics, boosted HIV education programs and produced a soap opera to curb new infections of HIV, even as the spread of the virus slowed in neighboring Malaysia and Thailand.
Treatment can cost as much as S$1,500 ($1,073) a month in Singapore and most insurers don’t cover the costs. Generic versions of AIDS drugs aren’t available in Singapore and doctors in the city-state often advise patients to buy cheaper pills in Malaysia or Thailand.
The government said in January it would subsidize HIV treatment for patients who can’t afford it.
An anonymous HIV test costs S$30, according to Action for AIDS.
The situation is even worse than in developing countries not far from here. In Cambodia, everything is free.
In France, which has 64 million people, new cases fell to 6,940 from 8,930 over the same period.
HIV-AIDS is the world’s deadliest infectious disease. About 33 million people were living with HIV, 2.7 million were newly infected with the virus and 2 million people died from an AIDS- related complication in 2008, according to the World Health Organization’s latest estimates.
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