The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Eight more ART centres to be set up by January

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Nov 23, 2005

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Eight more ART centres to be set up by January

Divya Ramamurthi

Karnataka State Aids Prevention Society will set up centres in Gulbarga, Raichur, Bijapur, Bagalkot, Belgaum, Davangere, Kolar and Mangalore districts

BANGALORE: Thirty-year-old S. Jaya, an HIV-positive person from Gulbarga, was advised by her doctors last year to start anti-retroviral therapy (ART). Even though she knows that the therapy can help her, she has been putting it off.

Ms. Jaya's problem is that there is no ART centre in her district and she has to travel a long distance to either Bangalore or Mysore for treatment. "I do not what to travel all the way. It will be very tiring and I will not be able to afford it," she said.

The Karnataka State Aids Prevention Society (KSAPS) has set up four ART centres in the State — Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital, Bangalore; Kempegowda Institute Medical Sciences, Bangalore; Mysore Medical College; and Vijayanagar Institute of Medical Sciences, Bellary. Anti-retroviral drugs are given to patients who are HIV positive and have a CD4 count of less than 300 or those in the advanced stages of infection. These drugs slow down the reproduction and progression of the virus in the body. Recognising the problems of limited access faced by several affected persons, the KSAPS, with funding from the National Aids Control Organisation, is planning to set up eight more ART centres in Gulbarga, Raichur, Bijapur, Bagalkot, Belgaum, Davangere, Kolar and Mangalore districts. "We have chosen the districts based on their geographical locations and on the prevalence of HIV. We found a lot of people were not opting for ART, as they did not want to travel long distances," said Jangay, technical consultant for ART centres at KSAPS. He said the new centres will be established in January.

Another reason for setting up the new clinics is to stop the people with HIV from going to quacks for treatment, KSAPS officials said. "There are several doctors, including those of alternative medicine, who claim to have a cure for AIDS. We do not want people to be fooled by them," Dr. Jangay said.

According to last year's sentinel survey, HIV prevalence in 20 of the 27 districts is at least one per cent. In Gulbarga, 2.3 per cent of pregnant women were tested HIV positive in antenatal clinics. In Raichur, Davangere, and Dakshina Kannada districts, the percentage of pregnant women who tested positive was 1.1, 2.1 and 1.4 respectively.

The percentage of patients at sexually transmitted disease clinics, who tested HIV positive, was over 1.3.

Dr. Jangay said the adherence rates in the ART clinics is almost 98 per cent. "We have treated over 1,700 persons and most of them are following their drug regimes," he said.

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