PESHAWAR: The health department is facing a daunting task to cope with the HIV/ Aids patients as the programme has been resumed after remaining dormant for two years.

The National Aids Control Programme detected 11 HIV cases in Peshawar jail in 2012 but the screening was stopped midway owing to shortage of funds and kits so all the inmates were not investigated. The contributing factors for HIV are prevalent.

The UN agencies have said that causative agents for spread of HIV/Aids exist in jail as well as in population throughout the province. The Aids Control Programme was stopped when federal government halted funds after passage of 18th Amendment.

The programme became responsibility of the provincial government in 2014 after which no allocation was made for it.

Sources said that PC-1 of the programme, drafted by provincial health department,did not get approval despite being sent to authorities many times as it was returned with observations.

`The department has not been able to reach the families of the registered patients and safeguard others from being infected, experts said. They said that patients detected positive in jails should be traced and treated.

The experts said that it was difficult to adopt international practices like distribution of condoms among the vulnerable population for prevention of Aids. `The best option is creating awareness about HIV to make it a socially acceptable disease and save the situation from snowballing into major public health issue,` they added.

The expert believed that 80 per cent of the jailed people happened to be professional criminals including injection drug users (IDUs), who were exposed to contracting the disease.

Ofñcials said that last year, the government approved an integrated programme for providing treatment to HIV, hepatitis and thalassaemia patients with an outlay of Rs500 million for three years. They added that of the total allocation, Rs330 million would go to HIV patients.

According to 2012 statistics, the province has 2,727 H IV patients including 900 women and 120 children. However, according toWHO estimates, the number patients is 16,000 in the province. Fata has 358 registered patients.

Dr Ayub Roz, manager of the programme, told Dawn that they had planned intervention in jails where inmates would be subjected to consent-based screening, testing and treatment.

They will get free counselling and other facilities like their isolation f rom others.

`We are in the process to supply medicines and appoint staff for anti-retroviral therapy centre at Hayatabad Medical Complex, which has 1,450 patients under treatment,` said Dr Ayub. He added that Aids Prevention and Treatment Centre, Kohat had 427 patients.

He said that more than 100 HIV-infected people also received treatment in Peshawar.

He said that they would lay stress on ending stigma associated with the disease. The people thought it a sex-borne ailment and therefore hesitated to be tested it, he said.

`We have planned seminars, walks, ses-sions and counselling of the patients and their relatives to scale up awareness among the people regarding its prevention,` said Dr Ayb.

He said that they were encouraging selftesting to identify patients with HIV and send them for treatment and prevent spread of ailment to general population. He said that establishment of centres in Peshawar, Bannu, Mardan, Dera Ismail Khan, Abbottabad and Batkhela were also part of the PC-1 to facilitate patients in their own areas.

`Unsafe sex relation was not the only cause of the ailment but blood contact with infected people is a cause of rise in the disease as 27.2 per cent IDUs accounted for total patients in the province. The IDUs use the same syringes repeatedly which causes its spread,` he said.

Dr Ayub said that tenders for furniture, equipment and diagnostic and medical stuff had been floated and the programme would be in full swing within a month.