RATODERO, July 16: Almost 180 patients have registered themselves at the HIV/Aids treatment and Care Centre, set up in the central Laboratory of the Chandka Medical College Hospital of Larkana in 2006.

However, facilities for CD-4 count test, CD-4 viral load, genotype and PCR tests are not there at the centre and patients have to go to Karachi for the tests.

Treatment of children affected by HIV is also not available in the centre and patients are referred to Karachi.

The number of HIV/Aids patients registered at the centre by the end of January was 134 out of which 60 were receiving regular treatment and others discontinued while 20 have died.

According to sources, five to ten cases are detected at the centre every month, most of them transgender, male and female sex workers and intravenous drug users.

Twelve thalessaemia patients were found to be detected as HIV/Aids cases in 2011 and after that testing of patients stopped.

The centre does not have proper staff and only one doctor is posted there.

No lady doctor, technician, male/female counsellor for patients, computer operator or store keeper is there at the centre.

Sources said that five suspected HIV/Aids cases were recently referred from Nawabshah but they left the centre because there was no facility for test or treatment.

The incidence of HIV/Aids in Larkana is on a rise. The head of a private blood bank said that he had screened the blood of five young donors last week and two of them tested HIV positive.

Dr Ghulam Shabbir Shaikh, assistant professor of Pathology at the Benazir Bhutto Medical University in Larkana said that HIV cases were increasing in Larkana district because of easy availability of intravenous drugs. He said that in local hotels eunuchs offered sex to people which was also spreading HIV virus. Similarly, women sex workers also had their share in the spread of the deadly virus.

He said that blood banks were providing unscreened blood to needy people.—PPI