Skip to main content

Third line HIV treatment through government soon




The Centre will soon include Third Line therapy for persons living with HIV in the government’s Anti-Retroviral Treatment programme.


Preliminary work has begun in this regard and the process is expected to be completed in eight to 10 months, Lov Verma, Secretary, Department of AIDS Control, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, said on Saturday.

Third line drugs are said to be the only succour for HIV-affected who have become resistant to second line drugs.

At present, patients requiring third line treatment are forced to go to the private sector for treatment.

Identifying patients,the first step

The government would have to identify the number of patients who need such treatment before it can place orders for the medicines and formulate a budget, he told The Hindu on the sidelines of the Launch Workshop of National Data Analysis Plan under National AIDS Control Programme-IV held here.

The Technical Research Group (TRG) had taken the government’s suggestion to include third line treatment and approval was received only last week.

The TRG has now been asked to submit a timeline for the project, after which it will be sent to the finance department for approval, he said.

It is expected that the third line treatment will be included in next year’s budget.

Checking

transmission

Speaking on the Prevention of Parent-to-Child Transmission scheme, Mr. Verma said the Department of AIDS Control would roll out the programme this year.

In the first year, it expects to cover 90 per cent of the problem districts, and the entire country should be covered by next year, he said.

Currently, training and preparation for the PPTCT is under way, which would be rolled out in a phased manner.

The PPTCT is already in place in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.

MoUs signed

with Ministries

The Department of AIDS Control would soon be signing a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Information and Technology to explore different advocacy methods, he said.

It had already signed MoUs with the Ministry of Shipping and six other Ministries.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NGT terminates chairmen of pollution control boards in 10 states (downtoearth,)

Cracking the whip on 10 State Pollution Control Boards (SPCBs) for ad-hoc appointments, the National Green Tribunal has ordered the termination of Chairpersons of these regulatory authorities. The concerned states are Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand, Kerala, Rajasthan, Telangana, Haryana, Maharashtra and Manipur. The order was given last week by the principal bench of the NGT, chaired by Justice Swatanter Kumar. The recent order of June 8, 2017, comes as a follow-up to an NGT judgment given in August 2016. In that judgment, the NGT had issued directions on appointments of Chairmen and Member Secretaries of the SPCBs, emphasising on crucial roles they have in pollution control and abatement. It then specified required qualifications as well as tenure of the authorities. States were required to act on the orders within three months and frame Rules for appointment [See Box: Highlights of the NGT judgment of 2016 on criteria for SPCB chairperson appointment]. Having
Post a Comment
Click Here To Read more »

High dose of Vitamin C and B3 can kill colon cancer cells: study (downtoearth)

In a first, a team of researchers has found that high doses of Vitamin C and niacin or Vitamin B3 can kill cancer stem cells. A study published in Cell Biology International showed the opposing effects of low and high dose of vitamin C and vitamin B3 on colon cancer stem cells. Led by Bipasha Bose and Sudheer Shenoy, the team found that while low doses (5-25 micromolar) of Vitamin C and B3 proliferate colon cancer stem cells, high doses (100 to 1,000 micromolar) killed cancer stem cells. Such high doses of vitamins can only be achieved through intravenous injections in colon cancer patients. The third leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, colon cancer can be prevented by an intake of dietary fibre and lifestyle changes. While the next step of the researchers is to delineate the mechanisms involved in such opposing effects, they also hope to establish a therapeutic dose of Vitamin C and B3 for colon cancer stem cell therapy. “If the therapeutic dose gets validated under in vivo
1 comment
Click Here To Read more »

SC asks Centre to strike a balance on Rohingya issue (.hindu)

Supreme Court orally indicates that the government should not deport Rohingya “now” as the Centre prevails over it to not record any such views in its formal order, citing “international ramifications”. The Supreme Court on Friday came close to ordering the government not to deport the Rohingya. It finally settled on merely observing that a balance should be struck between humanitarian concern for the community and the country's national security and economic interests. The court was hearing a bunch of petitions, one filed by persons within the Rohingya community, against a proposed move to deport over 40,000 Rohingya refugees. A three-judge Bench, led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, began by orally indicating that the government should not deport Rohingya “now”, but the government prevailed on the court to not pass any formal order, citing “international ramifications”. With this, the status quo continues even though the court gave the community liberty to approach i
1 comment
Click Here To Read more »