Hospitals of the Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BMP), the erstwhile Bangalore City Corporation in a joint venture with Freedom Foundation, an NGO working with HIV patients helped four infected women to deliver normal and uninfected babies recently. The effort is claimed to be a first of its kind in the country.

The HIV awareness programme in city corporation hospitals has reinstated confidence to handle AIDS cases in small government medical centres Ashok C Rao, director, Freedom Foundation.

The HIV awareness programme is a part of Freedom Foundation's extensive AIDS control prevention campaign where retroviral drugs, training of hospital staff and mandatory laboratory tests are conducted free of cost for patients in the BMP hospitals.

The suspected cases are identified through an intensive HIV counselling programmes where women come forward to undergo tests. Out of a few thousands of tests conducted in the last year, Freedom Foundation has detected 26 pregnant women to be HIV infected, said Ashok Rao.

The Foundation with the help of BMP officials set up free counselling centres at its three referral hospitals in the city where the four babies were delivered by mothers who were HIV-positive. The blood samples of all pregnant woman are tested and if found HIV positive, the women are counselled. We have trained our medical staff to handle such patients. Dr. M Vijayalakshmi, additional health officer, BMP told pharmabiz.com

Freedom Foundation ensured that the BMP hospitals strictly adhered to a set of precautions that are followed worldwide where the doctor and nurses avoid coming in contact with the patient's blood or body fluids. A set of double gloves, glasses, cap, masks and gum boots are provided and care is taken to ensure that the linen is discarded after delivery.

“There was no problem as the cases were normal deliveries, and the Class IV employees co-operated,” said Dr. Vijayalakshmi.

In order to prevent the mother to child transmission, the women were administered anti retroviral drugs before delivery. The C-reactive protein test was conducted on the newborns, which proved that all babies were HIV negative.

As a precaution, the doctors advised the mothers to avoid breast feed the babies. But one mother insisted on it, said Dr. Vijayalakshmi who added that investigations are being conducted and the baby is under observation.

The patients are not charged any fee for the special services and we plan to introduce it all the 33 BMP hospitals which offer maternity services, said Ashok Rao.

Another effort by the BMP hospitals during the delivery of the HIV-infected patients was that care was taken not isolate the patients. We were careful not to make it known to the other patients about their co-patient's status. Only during the delivery all the necessary precautions were taken, said Dr. DL Nagaratna, additional health officer, south, BMP.

There are three more pregnant HIV positive women who are waiting to deliver at a BMP hospital.

The BMP has 23 dispensaries under its supervision. Out of the 33 maternity homes six are upgraded. In addition, there are 47 BMP dispensaries in the city.

The main role of the Foundation is to identify the potential sites which indicate the high risk groups. The Foundation's HIV pregnant woman counselling is also conducted at the St. Martha's Hospital and the MS Ramaiah Hospitals. The Foundation is also working towards providing free antiretroviral drugs to patients in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.

The funding is need-based for the HIV prevention and control programme. For the year ending March 2003 the expenses incurred was Rs. 4.5 crore. Between April 2003 to March 2004 we have allocated a funding of Rs. 6.5 crore, said Ashok Rao.