ARVs for lunch, and I’m not even HIV-positive! Maybe I should become Muslim

Our unregulated ARV doses are usually administered to us by boys, and increasingly girls wearing improvised gloves – transparent polythene bags – which they use to unpluck the hot pieces of roast pork from the skewers in the smoky joints where we go for the delicacy that is considered haram by our Muslim brethren. ILLUSTRATION | JOHN NYAGAH | NMG 

In Summary

• Even if the ARVs keep Aids at bay, the patient’s internal organs may in the long run be affected. So, as we enjoy our pork in Uganda, we are ingesting other things that our kidneys and livers may fail to handle.

By JOACHIM BUWEMBO
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I have a confession to make. I have been taking antiretroviral drugs for several years without a...
doctor’s prescription. I am not alone. Almost all non-Muslim Ugandans with some financial means are taking ARVs without first consulting a doctor.

Our unregulated ARV doses are usually administered to us by boys, and increasingly girls wearing improvised gloves – transparent polythene bags – which they use to unpluck the hot pieces of roast pork from the skewers in the smoky joints where we go for the delicacy that is considered haram by our Muslim brethren.

The pork meat comes from pigs – as if you didn’t know – which are increasingly fed on ARVs in order to grow faster to give farmers more profits.

Discovery of the ARV recipe that supposedly multiplies the rate of a pig’s growth apparently caused stockouts in public health facilities, and finally some arrests are now being made.

Hospital staff have been caught selling ARVs to pig farmers at insanely low prices – an ARV tablet is currently being sold to a pig farmer at only Ush500, which equals about 14 US cents. Dear God, why do such things have to happen in my country?

The supply of ARVs for Ugandan pigs was boosted this year when hunger hit many parts of the country; apparently, you just cannot take ARVs when you are hungry. So hungry villagers on treatment were happy to surrender their lifesaving pills that they could no longer swallow in exchange for a few shillings to buy food.

Over a decade ago, when an Aids diagnosis was considered a death sentence, the cost of ARVs was so high only the richest members of society could afford them.

Then the American people stepped in with the President’s Emergency Fund for Aids Relief and together with the work of the Geneva-based Global Fund, even the poorest people can now access ARVs.

Maybe that is why people are no longer worried about the extremely high cost of ARVs, because they are not told the price that the American and other countries’ taxpayers are paying. So a guard at a government hospital in Uganda can easily sell you an ARV tab at 14 US cents after getting it for less from the storekeeper/pharmacist inside the building.

I am not a doctor but my ordinary understanding makes me suspect that we are treading on dangerous ground.

Taking in low doses of a drug means introducing that drug into the system, meaning that should a time come when you actually need the drug, its effectiveness could have been compromised — that is the layman in me thinking. 

And what about those people already using the drugs on prescription, should they take in more through pork? Or should we argue that by giving all pork lovers ARVs we are treating them in advance, a kind of pre-exposure therapy, in case they happen to get the virus?

Some medical people tell us of overmedication, which the kidneys may fail to cope with, as unhandled toxins end up affecting the liver, while raising the incidence of kidney disease in Uganda.

So even if the ARVs keep Aids at bay, the patient’s internal organs may in the long run be affected. So, as we enjoy our pork in Uganda, we are ingesting other things that our kidneys and livers may fail to handle.