PESHAWAR, Jan 19: The NWFP health department is planning to establish of a centre to provide symptomatic treatment to HIV/AIDS patients, official said.
"This will be the second centre for the patients of HIV/AIDS after the Philippines, where the HIV/AIDS people will be given symptomatic treatment", he said.
Stressing the need to provide HIV/AIDS patients with counselling, he said the provincial Aids Control Programme had asked chief executives of the Khyber Teaching Hospital, Lady Reading Hospital and Hayatabad Medical Complex, to identify suitable institutions having properly qualified staff besides a commitment to take care of these patients.
"We have issued letters to these hospitals on Jan 8 and a reply is still being awaited", official said. According to him, they would establish a centre at one of these hospitals, after receiving replies from the chief executives.
The official said that the centre would fulfil the need of patients, adding there was a large number of people who needed to be hospitalized. All of these hospitals, the official said, refused admission to the HIV/AIDS patients in their general wards, saying they would infect other patients. Lately, local NGOs had begun campaigning for the establishment of a centre, where these patients could be kept.
The official said that patients from all over the country as well as from Afghanistan would benefit after the establishment of such a centre. In the absence of a treatment centre, the official said, most of the HIV/AIDS patients stayed at their homes, causing embarrassment to their families. He said that these patients were looked down upon even by their close relatives.
There were 414 HIV/AIDS patients in the NWFP and they had no facility where they could seek cure for such common ailments like fever, diarrhoea and bad throat.
He said 13 per cent of the total HIV/AIDS patients were women, adding they did not have any place where could be admitted in case of deliveries. Recently, he said, a woman from Miranshah, whose husband had died of AIDS nine months ago, was turned away by hospitals, contending they did not have a ward where she could be admitted. Her husband had been deported from Dubai after having been tested positive for HIV/ AIDS two years ago, he added.
"She delivered a perfectly healthy baby after a gynaecologist took pity on her and risked admitting her in an isolation room reserved for hepatitis patients," said the official.