Karnataka - Gulbarga   

Eight more ART centres in State

Special Correspondent

They will be set up in two months

GULBARGA: Director of the Karnataka State AIDS Prevention Society (KSAPS) G.B. Meti on Tuesday announced that eight more Anti-Retroviral Treatment (ART) centres will be established in the State within two months to bring treatment closer to those in need.

ART treatment facilities are available in Bangalore, Mysore, Hubli and Bellary.

Mr. Meti said the Government has decided to establish ART centres in Gulbarga, Bijapur, Bagalkot, Raichur, Belgaum, Udupi, Davangere and Mangalore.

Announcing this at a workshop on AIDS and HIV for media persons here, Mr. Meti admitted that AIDS patients requiring the treatment in other districts are finding it difficult to travel to places where the centres have been located. He said one of the main reasons for the non-establishment of ART centres in all the district headquarters was lack of medicines.

He said the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) a few years ago decided to establish 20 ART centres in the country and four of them have been established in the State.

Mr. Meti said another difficulty in establishing such a centre in all the district headquarters is that all these centres should have experts. Initially, NACO decided to establish these centres where there were government medical colleges. Now this was being extended to other places. The other district headquarters will also be included in phases.

The official said cases of HIV and AIDS are on the rise in the State. It has gone up to 1.70 per cent (during the survey in 2004-2005) from 1.52 per cent in 2003-04 in the State. He said there are 119 voluntary counselling and testing centres (VCTC) and parent-to-child transmission centres in the State, and within six months all taluk headquarters will have at least one such centre. The Government has also proposed to launch a mass campaign against HIV and AIDS on March 8.

Guru Hiremath, counsellor at the voluntary counselling and testing centre in Gulbarga, said HIV positive cases are on the rise in Gulbarga and the incidence rate ranged from 20 per cent to 24 per cent of the blood samples tested so far. Of the blood samples tested for HIV positive in Gulbarga district, a majority of 220 cases were from Gulbarga city, followed by 41 from Chitapur, 33 Shahapur, 50 Jewargi, 27 Aland, 22 Sedam, 20 Afsalpur, 12 Chincholi, 10 Surpur, and nine from Yadgir taluks.

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