By Christian Rea Tizcareño

I need drugs to live

Juan Estrada Trujillo has been a hemophiliac since birth and in 1985 became infected with HIV. “After the earthquake”, he says, “a lot of contaminated blood came into the country. We told the doctors we were afraid we were going to get infected. They told us not to worry because ‘the blood was one hundred percent safe’ but it wasn’t”.

“There were around 50 hemophiliacs at that time. Now there are only 2 of us left as everyone was infected. When we found out, we brought a lawsuit against one of the doctors from the Centro Médico Siglo XXI. He, in turn, told us that nobody was to blame, ‘the blood is analyzed here. You must have got it during a window period or who knows’. Since then, they started to push us to one side and we got braver”.

Juan remembers how he found out: “My wife started to lose weight. I took her to the Social Security but nothing. I took her to private doctors—she was desperate because she said the drugs from the Social Security were useless— but nothing. She was getting worse and worse until I spoke with a doctor and she tested us for HIV. We were told we were HIV-positive in November 1989”.

However, as no antiretroviral therapy was yet available at the IMSS, his partner quickly went downhill and died.

Juan started anti-HIV treatment in 1992. One year later hepatitis C appeared in his life. “I was admitted to Hospital de La Raza for 15 days. I can’t explain why I got infected”.

“Since 1993, I have been going to the General Hospital of Zone number 53, Los Reyes, La Paz, State of Mexico. I need to take the drugs for the rest of my life but I have always had problems with them. Now I have been asked for an annual ‘medical summary’ so that I can be given the anti-hemophilia factor. I once had to go three days without antiretrovirals and once we were given expired drugs.

“I am fed up but I cannot buy them. There is one drug that costs around 1700 and others that cost around 2500 and I need 12 boxes a month.

“I have less strength now. Before I used to take apart trucks but now I cannot work. What I used to do in one day now takes me three. It is like I’ve been beaten. I no longer know if it is because of the bleeding as a result of hemophilia or the side effects of the antiretroviral drugs. The symptoms get all mixed up. My hands and feet are painful and withered due to peripheral neuropathy.

“I sometimes start bleeding from sleeping in one position. I then have to inject the factor because if I don’t, wow, it gets hot and the pain is unbearable. But I am never hospitalized unless I get an infected tooth or for an operation.

“A doctor told me ‘your fate is to die in hospital unless you want to die at home. The day you get very serious, that is where you’ll end up’.

“There are so many of us with HIV/AIDS that there will never be a shortage. However, the lady from the Social Security tells me to ‘do as I like’, challenging me. I wanted to get on with things peacefully but the truth is that they are really driving me to file a suit for damages”.

Terra