PESHAWAR, Aug 31: The NWFP Health Department has finalised a proposal to set up an anti-retroviral (ARV) therapy centre at Liaqat Memorial Hospital, Kohat to provide treatment to HIV/AIDS patients in southern districts of the NWFP.

Official sources said that the fast spread of HIV/AIDS virus from migrant workers to their wives and children finally caught attention of national programme managers and international donor agencies. This resulted in an agreement to set up a treatment centre in Kohat, a few kilometers off Hangu, where 13 members of two families were confirmed as HIV/AIDS patients, they added.

The decision to set up the centre came after a high-level delegation visited hospitals in southern NWFP on the directives of Dr Asma Bokhari of National AIDS Control Programme, said a doctor associated with the Provincial AIDS Control Programme.

He said that Kohat’s would be the second HIV/AIDS treatment centre in the NWFP. The first one looking after such patients was established in Hayatabad Medical Complex, he added.

All related details for setting up the ARV treatment centre would be discussed at a meeting of the National AIDS Control Programme scheduled to be held in Lahore on September 15, said the doctor.

When contacted, the NWFP health secretariat confirmed that before proceeding on a foreign visit, the provincial health secretary had approved the proposal.

The provincial government had also spared Dr Irshad Noor and Dr Musarrat Jabeen to serve the proposed AIDS treatment centre, it was further confirmed.