India could run out of a critical medicine in its free HIV/AIDS drugs program in three weeks due to bureaucratic bungling, a senior government official said, leaving more than 150,000 sufferers without life-saving drugs for about a month. 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. The supply crunch will be an embarrassment for the four-month-old government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has promised to deliver more affordable and better health services.
As drugs in the open market are expensive, the government provides more than one-third of India's 2.1 million HIV/AIDS patients with free antiretroviral drugs that are procured from pharmaceutical companies via a tender process. Delays in approving such tenders has left the National AIDS…
