Himachal government to bring education scheme for HIV-afflicted kids

Tribune News Service

Shimla, December 1

On the occasion of the World AIDS Day, Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu today announced that his government would bring a scheme in the next financial year to provide educational opportunities to children living with HIV. “We will make budgetary provisions for the scheme to help children living with HIV infection,” said the Chief Minister. Out of the 5,534 persons living with HIV in the state, around 300 are in up to 15 age-group.

Doctors say the state is doing quite well on most parameters to control the disease and manage the patients. “As against the national numbers, our annual death rate is quite low, around one-third of the national average. Similarly, the annual infection rate, too, is much lower than the national numbers,” said Dr Lalit Thakur from Himachal Pradesh State Aids Control Society.

He further said that the state was doing well on 95:95:95 parameters. The 95-95-95 targets entail diagnosing 95 per cent of the people living with HIV, putting them on antiretroviral therapy and suppressing their viral load.

Among the 12 districts, Kangra (1,499) and Hamirpur (1,058) have the most number of people living with HIV. Over 46 per cent of the patient load comes from these two districts alone. “The case load has always been high in Hamirpur district. Even the first HIV case of the state was detected here. The case load is primarily high here because a large chunk of our population is employed outside the state,” said Dr RK Agnihotri, Chief Medical Officer, Hamirpur.

“The other challenge we are facing is intravenous drug abuse. The infection is spreading due to the sharing of syringes,” he said.

On the occasion, the Chief Minister gave away awards to various organisations for their contribution in checking the spread of this dreaded disease. Stand Alone Integrated Counselling and Testing Centre, Una, Dr Radha Krishnan Government Medical College, Hamirpur, (STI Clinic), ART IGMC Shimla (ART Centre) and NGO Sunrise-Targeted Intervention Project (TIP) Una were awarded as best service centres.

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