Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2004. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Associated Press - July 6, 2004
Sabin Russell, srussell@sfchronicle.com.
Drawing from the countryside of Tamil Nadu and the neighboring state to the north, Andhra Pradesh, the sanatorium built to fight the ancient scourge of tuberculosis now sees 1 in 3 of its 860 beds filled by an AIDS patient.
"When people give up hope elsewhere, they come to Tambaram,'' said Dr. O. R. Krishnarajasekhar, who has worked at this hospital in the south end of Madras for seven years.
Hundreds more patients appear each day at the ambulatory clinic, where those suspecting they have HIV, or those in the early throes of AIDS, seek medicine to fight the bacteria and viruses exploiting their weakened immune systems.
Last year, 110,640 HIV-infected patients were treated at the clinic. Each day, an average of 50 new HIV infections is diagnosed.
The virus was first detected in India in 1986, during a routine blood test of prostitutes. From a handful of cases, the estimated number of HIV infections in India has swelled to 4.6 million, and some experts fear that the figure could jump to 25 million by 2010.
Despite an aggressive and effective AIDS prevention program in Tamil Nadu, the virus gained its foothold there first, and there are still more cases in this southern state than anywhere else in the country.
In ward 28, all 44 beds are occupied by eerily silent men, most sitting up, cross-legged on their blankets, some lying on their sides. Many were accompanied by their wives, who offer them food and comfort.
The female AIDS patients in ward 19 are noticeably sicker. There are no husbands to attend to them.
"The women come with more advanced disease,'' Krishnarajasekhar said. "Their husbands are either working or dead.''
Back at the clinic, a 28-year-old mother talks with Tambaram's deputy chief, Dr. S. Rajasekaran. Her husband, a taxi driver, died of AIDS, and she and her 3-year-old daughter are HIV-positive. Her daughter also has TB.
But Dr. Rajasekaran has some rare good news for them. The young girl has qualified for a new government program that will eventually provide, free of charge, a combination of AIDS drugs to 100,000 patients in India. The drugs interact with the TB medications she is already taking, so it will be six more months before she can start on the new AIDS regime.
But on this day, the 76-year-old hospital lives up to its name: In the Tamil language, "Tambaram" means "hope."
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