PESHAWAR, Sept 23: The NWFP health department has decided to set up an Aids treatment centre. Officials said that the centre would provide anti-retroviral drug therapy capable of providing symptomatic treatment to HIV/Aids patients.

"This will be the first centre for HIV/Aids patients in Pakistan and it will provide supportive treatment," Dr Mohammad Zafar, Manager of the NWFP HIV/Aids Control Programme, said. The centre, he said, would be established at the Hayatabad Medical Complex, adding that counselling would also be provided there.

Stressing the need for providing counselling to Aids patients, he said that the provincial Aids Control Programme had asked HMC's chief executive to identify one medical specialist and a senior nurse to be sent for training abroad.

Dr Zafar said that 429 had been registered in the Frontier province since the launch of the HIV/Aids Control Programme in 1990. Of the total, 52 had Aids while 377 were found to have been infected with HIV. He said that the mortality rate of Aids patients was very high.

He said that the programme was initially sponsored by the World Health Organisation but the World Bank was now sponsoring a five-year-programme, adding that it had been launched last year. The World Bank, he said would provide Rs280million soft-term grants over the programme period.

The NWFP government, he said, would provide 10 per cent of the funds while the rest of the amount would be contributed by the World Bank. He said that five such centres, including the one in the NWFP, would be established, adding that one centre each would be set up in Punjab, Balochistan, Sindh and Islamabad.

"We will forward the names of the nominated people to the federal government, which will then decide about where to send them for training," he said, adding that the centre would start working after the completion of their training.

Dr Zafar said that two years ago, the NWFP had established a voluntary counselling and testing centre at the Lady Reading Hospital where suspected HIV/Aids patients were being given free blood screening facilities.

Four more such centres, one each at Dera Ismail Khan, Abbottabad, Mardan and Swat, were being established to provide blood screening facilities and counselling for patients in these areas.

He said that these centres created awareness about preventive measures against HIV/Aids, adding that state-of-the-art equipment would be installed at the proposed ARV centre to safeguard patients against what he termed opportunistic diseases.