The meeting organised by Sangobaddho in Siliguri on Wednesday. Picture by Kundan Yolmo

Siliguri, June 25: HIV positive patients admitted to various wards of the North Bengal Medical College and Hospital are still facing discrimination and harassment, despite several workshops against these by the health department for the hospital staff.

These and other problems faced by the AIDS patients surfaced at a meeting organised by Sangobaddho, a network of HIV positive persons in the Siliguri sub-division area.

Several members attended the meeting today and spoke about how nurses, paramedics and at times, even doctors, behaved badly with them once they got to know their HIV status.

“A woman admitted to the female medicine ward with bone TB had to give her marrow sample thrice as on two occasions, the nurses, after drawing the samples from her spine, had left them on a table,” said Pratima, an outreach worker of the organisation.

The patients’ bedcovers, sheets and intravenous drips are not changed, some operations not conducted and medication for opportunistic infections are not upgraded, the participants alleged.

Among others, Sangobaddho secretary Sachindra Das and former principal of the NBMCH Sangita Bhattacharya spoke at the meeting.

“Of the 1,750 positive persons in the Siliguri region, over 500, including 10 children, have started anti-retroviral therapy after being enrolled at Anti-retroviral Therapy Centre at NBMCH,” a counsellor working there said.