National Aids Control Organisation (NACO) has decided to launch 3 more centres for free ARV treatment at Nair Hospital, Sion Hospital and KEM Hospital in Mumbai. In the city there has been only one centre at JJ Hospital for free ARV treatment.

According to Dr Vaswani, project coordinator, Mumbai district Aids Control society and WHO Consultant for HIV drug treatment, apart from this, there are 3 other centres in Maharashtra. The centre at Sangli started functioning on December 2004 and centres at Pune and Nagpur started on January 2005.

According to NACO, as on 25 February 2005, around 13,000 AIDS cases were reported in Maharashtra. But there was no adequate number of hospitals in Maharashtra to provide free ARV drug treatment. According to Vijay R Nair of UDAAN, a Mumbai-based NGO, there is only one hospital in Mumbai to provide free treatment under govt scheme. People from the whole Maharashtra have been thus depending on the JJ Hospital until now.

Citing the government's target of covering 25,000 patients, Ananad Grover, director of the Mumbai HIV/AIDS unit of the Lawyers' Collective says, "So far the government couldn't cover even 10 per cent of the target." Unfortunately, the government is providing only the first line regimens of ART, he added.

"Even in the first line regime, the combination of drugs with EFZ is not available. Persons suffering from Tuberculosis (TB) cannot take drugs with NVP, and would require to take drugs with Efavirenz (EFZ). Most of the persons living with HIV have TB as the most common opportunistic infection. The non availability if drugs with EFZ is the denial of treatment and medical care to persons living with HIV and TB infection," he opined.

When contacted by Pharmabiz, Dr Alka Gogte, project coordinator, Mumbai district Aids Control society said that JJ Hospital has started giving drugs with combination of EFZ.

"We are providing the treatment to only pregnant women having the CD4 count less than 200 and the women with CD4 count around 400-500 do not require the treatment. And we provide a single dose of NVP to the women and the infant at the time of delivery only to prevent the transmission and it does not cause harm," she said.