PESHAWAR, Dec 28: National AIDS Control Programme (NACP) in collaboration with the World Health Organisation have launched three-year anti-retroviral therapy (ART) programme.

“We have established treatment centres in Islamabad, Peshawar, Lahore and Karachi where medicines for 30 patients have been sent to each centre. Doctors and nurses have already been trained in India,” said the WHO’s National Programme Officer for HIV/AIDS.

ART would treat the 3,077 HIV-infected persons in the country. ART, he said, reduced transmission and slowed the HIV progression, along with dramatically improving the quality of life and changing HIV from a fatal disease into a chronic life-long medical condition, he said.

Pakistan is rapidly changing from a low prevalence country into a concentrated HIV/AIDS epidemic in high-risk population sub-groups (injecting drug users, male sex workers), he said.

It was likely that under-reporting because of inadequate surveillance systems, pervasive social stigma, lack of knowledge among the general population and medical practitioners and the limited number of voluntary counselling and testing centres contributed to the under-estimation, he said.

“We have devised a plan under which prevention and treatment programmes go hand in hand. Unfortunately, prevention programmes take time to produce results and high-risk sexual behaviours are not easily changed into safer practices,” he said.

Using mathematical modelling program (UNAIDS projection program 2005) the NACP has calculated approximately 36,000 HIV-infected persons currently present in Pakistan. “Assuming that 20 per cent of these patients will be eligible for starting ART over the next three years, we will need ARVs for 7,200 patients,” the WHO representative said.

However, he said, existing healthcare infrastructure and HIV delivery systems did not have the absorptive capacity to incorporate ARVs for such a large number of patients. “Therefore, we are initially focusing on development and scaling up of staff capacity and health infrastructure, such as diagnostic facilities, treatment support and home-based services before scaling up of ARVs.”

The WHO official said that ART had been made available in four of the five HIV treatment and care centres, including, PIMS Islamabad, Civil Hospital Karachi, Mayo Hospital Lahore and HMC Peshawar. Another centre in Quetta would become operational by May 2006.

Referring to the three-year programme, he said that a total of 1,800 patients would be treated.