‘Pandemic has affected AIDS detection drives in Jharkhand’

RANCHI: The pandemic has thrown Jharkhand’s HIV detection programme off the track this year, officials of the Jharkhand State Aids Control Society (JSACS) conceded on Tuesday.
“Since the nationwide lockdown was imposed on March 24, our laboratory technicians at the HIV testing centres were pulled in to test Covid-19 samples across the state. As its result, the HIV testing in Jharkhand was badly affected all these months,” Rajiv Ranjan, project director of JSACS, told TOI on the sidelines of a function which was organized to observe the World Aids Day.
Ranjan said JSACS does not have an exact count of the patients which contracted the deadly virus this year. “However, we have begun aggressive testing for a month to detect new infections,” he said. Jharkhand has 66 HIV testing centres, each of which is equipped with a technician and a counsellor. As on date, many technicians manning these centres are still on Covid duty on deputation basis.
As per JSACS, there are approximately 25,700 people living with HIV in Jharkhand. Of them, 1,879 cases were reported between April 2019 and March 2020. A year before that, 1,791 cases were detected.
The pandemic, which infected 1.09 lakh people in Jharkhand and killed 964 people so far, exposed the state’s frail infrastructure and skeletal manpower resources. In the peak of infections, the department of health, medical education and family welfare scourged for paramedics, microbiologists and lab technicians on contract, but received a lukewarm response.
Ranjan also said providing medicines to HIV patients during the lockdown was a challenge. “Though we had stocks of ART medicines (anti-retroviral treatment) enough to last a year, we had to deliver them to the patient’s doorsteps as they could not visit ART centres due to the lockdown,” he said. There are 12 ART centres statewide, including three medical colleges and district hospitals while a new one in Gumla is pending approval of the National Aids Control Organization (NACO).
Health minister Banna Gupta, who attended the function as a chief guest, said, “The Union government is aiming to eradicate HIV from the country by 2030. In Jharkhand, we are striving to eradicate the deadly disease by 2025.”