New Delhi, July 27: With over four million HIV-positive people in India, government is gearing up to tackle the problem by setting up community centres for AIDS patients, sensitising police and engaging civil society on the AIDS vaccine as and when it is ready, an official said today. The community centres would have facilities to take care of AIDS patients and provide them medicines for the "opportunistic infections such as tuberculosis," Meenakshi Datta Ghosh, project director of the National Aids Control Organisation said at the national convention of the parliamentary forum on HIV/AIDS. "Already one such centre is fuctioning in Delhi and ten more are to come up with the land being provided by the state government," she said.
"The setting up of centres was an important initiative in view of increasing load on the hospitals. Besides AIDS, these centres would also have facilities for dealing with other public health problems such as TB," Ghosh said. The setting up of one such centre needs about Rs 19 lakh, she said adding the aim was to set up centres all over the country.

Ghosh said NACO was also conducting sensitization programmes for police as it was found that it was "not sensitive" to the high-risk groups. Such programmes had already been conducted in four-five states and there were plans to expand it to other states, she said.

Bureau Report.