Since 2012, 25,000 HIV patients across Maharashtra have stopped treatment, of which more than half are untraceable. This has raised concerns that HIV patients might be risking their own lives and unknowingly spreading the infection to other people.
When health workers went looking for patients who did not turn up to undergo treatment at government centres, the Maharashtra State AIDS Control Society (MSACS) curated the data of such patients. If patients fail to turn up at government centres for more than three months, they are considered to have stopped treatment or loss-to-follow-up.
Since 2012, 53 per cent of loss-to-follow-up patients went missing and before 2012, there were 15,000 loss- to-follow-up cases, of which 30 per cent had died.
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