The Union ministry of health and family welfare has allocated Rs 400 crore for the HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment programme in the country. The National Aids Control Organization (NACO) has estimated Rs 11,585 crore as the financial requirement for the current five year plan, where the expenditure of Rs 7,786 crore is for the prevention and Rs 1,953 crore is for the care, support and treatment. The HIV treatment and counselling are conducted at the ART (anti retroviral therapy) across the country.

Specific to Karnataka, NACO has approved a yearly allocation of Rs 52.16 crore which is for the operations of the Karnataka State AIDS Prevention Society (KSAPS), and another Rs, 60 crore for Karnataka Health Promotion Trust. In addition, the State health budget has allocated Rs 1 crore for this year's KSAPS programme.

According to KSAPS, Karnataka has already around 20 districts under the AIDS prevention programme. Currently, there are 17 ART centres in the State and 15 more will be added. Each of these centres will have an annual NACO funding of Rs 18.5 lakh.

The State has 2.5 lakh HIV patients of which 1,650 are children. Out of the 25,000 HIV positive adults, 18,321 who require the medicines, are covered under the ART. Bangalore alone has 1.25 per cent of its population afflicted by HIV. At present, five ART centres at Bowring Hospital, Victoria Hospital, St John's Medical College Hospital, Kempegowda Institute of Medical Sciences( KIMS) and Indira Gandhi Institute of Child Health in Bangalore are providing the necessary care stated Dr CM Nataraj, medical officer, ART centre, Bowring Hospital.

Recently, NACO sanctioned Rs 65 lakh to Bowring Hospital's ART centre and has also recognized it as a Centre of Excellence. With this status, the ART centre would be able to distribute second line drugs that were available only at two centres in the country at Mumbai and Chennai. Further, it will allow the centre to impart both teaching and training programmes to medical and par medical professionals, besides being a facility for the research projects. Construction of a specialized ART centre at the hospital campus is also underway.

Going by the aggressive efforts in the State, KSAPS reports a decline in the number of HIV cases in the state to 0.86 per cent in 2007 from 1.13 per cent in 2006.

In 2004, Karnataka only had three Anti Retroviral Therapy (ART) Centres functioning at Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital, KR Hospital in Mysore and KIMS in Hubli. These ART centres have registered 6900 positive cases and 50 percent of them are under medication. In the case of 99 per cent cases, husband is the sole transmitter of the deadly virus to the wife and thereafter infects the child. The ART centre treats paediatric cases aged between 6 to 19 months.

The ART centres have been a relief for HIV positive cases to lead a normal life with the free medicines and counselling. The medication is life long and distributed free of cost to the ART centres. Due to the toxicity of the medicine, the patient's drug dosage is under close monitoring by the doctors, stated Dr Nataraj.