With the Karnataka State AIDS Prevention Society (KSAPS) relieving 172 counsellors and lab technicians from service, the HIV prevention programme in the State will be hit.
Patients visiting the 86 Integrated Counselling and Testing Centres (ICTCs), where the 172 contractual employees were posted, will now have to depend on the services of counsellors from neighbouring ICTCs. This is likely to increase the patient dropout rate. These centres were integrated with the National Health Mission in October 2009 after the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) discontinued funding for the centres. They have now been left in the lurch as the NHM funding (which was only for salary component) for the centres has not been approved this year.
Principal Secretary (Health and Family Welfare) Shalini Rajneesh, who admitted that the HIV prevention services would take a beating, said that officials were working on other options.
“The 172 staff had to be relieved as the Union government’s fund for these centres under the NHM has not been approved this year. We are looking at what best can be done to ensure that services are not hit,” she said.
According to a top official in the KSAPS, Karnataka has 545 ICTC centres, the second highest in the country after Tamil Nadu. “NACO may have discontinued funding in 2009 assuming that Karnataka has ICTCs in excess. The issue has been under discussion for the last two years and we were somehow managing with funds from the NHM. However, this year, the NHM has not approved funds for these centres and it is impossible to arrange funds to pay the salaries of these employees, which amounts to nearly Rs. 3.5 crore a year,” the official said.
Meanwhile, the employees are worried. Veeresh I.M., a counsellor at the ICTC in Kamalapura primary health centre in Hosapete, said that the KSAPS had appointed them after following the due recruitment process. “We were only told that some ICTCs were integrated with the NHM. While only our salaries were paid through the NHM, we were reporting directly to the KSAPS. It is unfair to remove us from service, and we will take up this issue legally,” he said.
Karnataka State Counsellors’ Association president Fayaz Ahmed M. said that the NHM integration was only an administrative arrangement and the counsellors were not kept in the loop. “We demand that the KSAPS continue their services with State funding, failing which we will approach the court,” he said.
Total no. of Integrated Counselling and Testing Centres in State: 545
No. of ICTCs integrated with National Health Mission: 86
172 counsellors and lab technicians working in these centres
KSAPS issues relieving orders to them on May 4
172 counsellors and laboratory technicians have been relieved from service
