Combating Aids: 6 centres created to stop transmission

LAHORE: Six centres have been established in the Punjab to prevent the transmission of AIDS from parents to their children, Punjab AIDS Control Programme (PACP) Director Dr Salman Shahid said on Tuesday.

The Prevention of Parent-to-Child-Transmission (PPCT) centres have been established in Lahore, Gujrat, Dera Ghazi Khan, Sargodha and Faisalabad districts with the help of UNICEF. Shahid was addressing a three-day training workshop on HIV/AIDS PPTCT under the PACP. Over 50 doctors are taking part in the workshop from all four provinces. The workshop aims at imparting training to doctors on how to prevent the transmission of AIDS from parents to children. He said the centres had prevented 23 out of 25 children of HIV/AIDS affected mothers from acquiring the disease. Shahid said the workshop aimed at bringing doctors together to start a joint struggle against the HIV/AIDS. He said the World Bank had been providing up to 80 percent of the funds for the Punjab AIDS Control Programme till 2010. “After 2010, the Punjab government started meeting the programme’s budgetary requirements from its own resources,” he said. The PACP is providing training to doctors, nurses and lady health workers at district level. He said an estimated 97,000 people in Pakistan were affected by HIV/AIDS in Pakistan. “Out of these, 28 per cent are women and 2 per cent children,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 7^th, 2012.