Karnataka - Bangalore   

Freedom Foundation gets Swiss aid for AIDS care

Staff Reporter

BANGALORE: Freedom Foundation, Bangalore, has received a grant of Rs. 49.5 crores to be spent over five years, from the Geneva-based Global Trust Fund for treating persons with HIV/AIDS.

The Global Trust Fund phase 2 gave grants to four organisations in India, including the Freedom Foundation offices in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, YRG Care in Chennai and Arcon in Mumbai earlier this year.

With the grant, Freedom Foundation will provide Anti Retroviral Therapy as well as train doctors in caring for persons with HIV/AIDS. Over 1,000 persons will be treated during the first year of the project.

The foundation has worked out a model which suggests that persons who can afford to pay the money for ART treatment will be asked to do so, middle class families will be asked to pay up to 75 per cent of the cost, lower income families will be asked to pay 50 per cent of the medicine cost.

The medicines will be free for persons from living below the poverty line.

A. Prakash Rao, project manager at Freedom Foundation, said the organisations have signed Memoranda of Understandings with different pharmaceutical companies to reduce the cost of ART medicines by 40 per cent.

According to Karnataka State AIDS Prevention Society (KSAPS), there are 50,000 people living with HIV/AIDS in the State while another 5 lakh people are suspected to be at high risk.

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