The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Financial assistance to orphans of HIV/AIDS victims

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Nov 12, 2009
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Financial assistance to orphans of HIV/AIDS victims

Special Correspondent

Trust with Rs. 5-crore corpus created, says V.K. Subburaj

— Photo: A.Muralitharan

A graduating Fellow making a presentation to Principal Secretary, Health, V.K. Subburaj and other officials at the Government Hospital of Thoracic Medicine (GHTM) in Tambaram Sanatorium on Tuesday.

Chennai: The State government will start extending financial assistance to orphaned children of HIV/AIDS victims in Tamil Nadu from November 14, Principal Secretary, Health, V.K. Subburaj said here on Tuesday.

A trust with a corpus fund of Rs.5 crore was created with the objective of extending educational and medical assistance to orphaned children of HIV/AIDS victims. A total of 1,612 children in Tamil Nadu had been identified as eligible for the aid, the senior official said, participating in a function at the Training Centre of Government Hospital of Thoracic Medicine (GHTM) in Tambaram Sanatorium. The function was to mark the valedictory of the fourth year and commencement of the fifth-year batch of HIV Fellowship, Clinical and Leadership Training Programme.

Interest from the corpus fund of Rs.5 crore would be used to meet the medical, educational and other expenses. About Rs.45 lakh would be spent every year, he said. Pointing out that Tamil Nadu was a model for the entire country not only in general healthcare but also for HIV/AIDS care, the senior official said the government spent Rs.110 crore a year on creating facilities and improving infrastructure, among others.

Mr. Subburaj said that while the national death rate among HIV/AIDS patients was 7.9 per cent a year, it was only a little over 4 per cent in Tamil Nadu. Further, the national average of patients discontinuing from treatment was 10.2 per cent per year and it was just 2.5 per cent in the State. This was possible because of better treatment facilities made available to patients.

The level of awareness and the need to invest more in HIV/AIDS was due to the nature of the disease and associated problems of stigma and discrimination. Though tuberculosis claimed more lives in Tamil Nadu, the government spent only Rs.10 crore on combating TB, Mr. Subburaj pointed out. He appealed to doctors who had completed the fellowship programmes in the past four years to provide the best of care to the affected people.

G. Manoharan, medical director, I-TECH, said that along with GHTM, they had been conducting the fellowship programme since 2005 to prepare junior and fairly experienced doctors to be leaders in HIV/AIDS-related care and support, education and research in India and also to support the State government.

Till now, 49 people had completed this fellowship programme and 30 per cent of them were women. Of the 49, a majority were from Tamil Nadu, while there were many others from the high-prevalence States of Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra and also from Karnataka, Kerala and New Delhi.

Mr. Subburaj released an abstract of the projects taken up for research by fellows in the past four years. S. Vinayagam, Director of Medical Education, released a fellowship curriculum package on the occasion.

Thomas Keaton,Vice-Consul, U.S. Consulate, Chennai, said such fellowships were a good example of public-private partnership programmes in the areas of HIV/AIDS care.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Tamil Nadu