NACO to roll out 21 Anti-Retroviral Treatment Plus Centres to Provide Drugs to HIV Patients

The National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) decided to roll out 21 Anti-Retroviral Treatment (ART) Plus centres to meet the increasing demand of providing second line drugs to HIV patients who failed to respond to treatment provided previously. The NACO’s ART programme is headed by Dr B B Rewari.

21 more ART Plus centres will be rolled out exclusively for such HIV positive people who require second line drug therapy. 2600 people are currently on second line drugs for HIV as they were critical despite taking medication. Presently a total of 4.48 lakh people are availing free of cost drugs at 324 ART centres.

Centres were proposed in Surat, Patna, Guwahati, Lucknow, Ahmedabad, and Jaipur. The government earmarked Rs 350 crore for the entire project of providing free of cost drugs at all ART centres. Of these 21 centres, seven are already functional.

10 centres had also been set up to provide the facility for second line drugs and seven paediatric HIV centres in the country. In addition to the 324 ART centres and other second line ones, there are 678 link centres and 259 community care centres.

NACO streeses on strengthening the link between the ART centres and more than 5000 Integrated Counselling and Testing Centres where people are initially identified and detected with the virus.

As per the National Family Health Survey-3, there are 2.47 million HIV infected people in India of which 3.8 per cent are children. Nearly 40 per cent of the people are unaware of their HIV status. According to NACO, there are around 30000 patients availing of medication in the private sector.

The World AIDS Day theme was getting to zero, but for the NACO it was also providing 100 per cent access to anti-retroviral drugs.