PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has expressed unwillingness to allow the Aids control programme in its present shape and asked the health department to revise it in the light of 10-year experience by introducing targeted approaches to cope with the increasing number of patients, sources say.

They said that PC-1 of the programme with an outlay of Rs358 million was rejected at a recent meeting and the health department was asked to revise the programme by introducing innovative and targeted approaches.The sources said that the meeting felt that a regular programme integrated with the health department was required to ensure service delivery to population. They said that the programme hadn`t delivered to a desired level so far while it benefited a few people in the shape of allowances and other financial benefits.

`The government will make the aids control programme a regular component of the health department from the next fiscal year provided it was redesigned to expand it geographically to reach the areas which reported more HIV/Aids patients,` the sources said.

The meeting also took note of the budgetary allocation for the programme and expenditure in the past and observed that a major chunk of the money had been spent on human resources instead of making services effective. It asked for a revised PC-1 with more allocation for prevention of the disease.The provincial aids control programme ended on June 30, 2013 and its employees are without salaries since then.

`The government is allocating some amount to make up for the salaries of its 18 employees, mostly peons, drivers and computer operators, till end of the current financial year but it is subject to approval of the finance department, they said.

The sources said that a new programme would get a go-ahead if it was re-branded in line with the government`s instruction to make it socially acceptable. The meeting chaired by additional chief secretary also indicated that there was no shortage of money for aids control programme.

The province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas together have 1,470 patients, said the sources, adding that according to UN estimates the number of infected people was about 16,000.

Following the passage of 18thamendment, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is required to run the provincial aids control programme from its own resources. Officials said that non-existence of services will lead to increase in number of patients because the province also had a localsource ofinfecdon.

Previously, it was thought that the disease was transmitted only by immigrant workers who had been deported from other countries after being tested positive for HIV/Aids.

They said that last year 20 per cent of the injecting drug users had tested positive for HIV/Aids.

The officials said that the government also wanted to continue the regular aids programme to be able to get funds from donor agencies.

For example, the Global Fund is sponsoring the antiretroviral therapy centres in Peshawar and Kohat for which the aids control programme in the health department would be required to coordinate the foreign-funded interventions in the province, they said.