The [him] moderator wants to thank an anonymous reader for setting the record straight on funding for antiretroviral drugs reported earlier in the week. The state funding can support six hundred people on antiretroviral treatment for a year, not six thousand.

Will the Myanmar Times publish a correction?

[him] moderator

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"As usual, the Myanmar Times is not immune to misunderstandings by its reporters, and losing things in translation. What Dr. Saw Lwin (who is Deputy Director General and not Deputy Director) said was Kyat 200 million (Kyat 2,000 lakh). The Myanmar Times reporter seemed to have been confused about million and lakh. So about $US 235,000 will be spent on antiretroviral drugs for the fiscal year 2012-2013. These funds are in national health budget of the state.

Continuity after one year, the lead time, and an estimate of when people will get to consume the antiretroviral drugs that are yet to be ordered, are not known. Considering the complexity of procuring antiretroviral drugs, it may be that budget line could not be spent in time and the funds will be redistributed back into the pool.

It seems that the new antretroviral treatment guidelines third edition in paper or PDF file form will not  reach in time all the providers who need them. But the information about the change in the threshold (from 200 to 350) has been made known to the public as much as possible by media and partners in the response. This is regardless of what is happening in the real world where even people with CD4s below 200 cannot always access antiretroviral treatment in the country.

Another confusion is that the reporting could mislead readers into the false belief that antiretroviral drugs boost the level of CD4 and then the increased CD4 cells fight HIV infection as a secondary effect while in fact the reverse is true. It's been 24 years into the country's epidemic and 16 years into antiretroviral treatment, and yet reporting on HIV is still a challenge for most reporters."