The Hindu : Microbiology department faces NACO fund squeeze

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Apr 30, 2002

Southern States

Southern States - Kerala-Thiruvananthapuram

Microbiology department faces NACO fund squeeze

By M. Dinesh Varma

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM April 29. The Microbiology Department at the Medical College faces an imminent squeeze on funding from the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) following the delay in setting up a Voluntary Counselling and Testing Centre (VCTC) as an upgraded entity of the AIDS Surveillance Centre (ASC).

Under the NACO scheme, all Medical Colleges are to set up VCTCs under their respective microbiology wings in place of the surveillance centres. Each VCTC would have two counsellors (one male and one female) and a technician. The NACO would provide Elisa readers, consumables and HIV testing kits besides funding salaries of staff and other recurring costs.

The Microbiology Department was the only one in the Medical College sector to set up a surveillance centre in 1986 under the joint auspices of the ICMR and NACO, four years after the first AIDS case was reported in the State in 1982. And, the upgradation into a VCTC comes as part of the changed AIDS management protocol of the National AIDS Control Organisation.

The delay in switching over to a VCTC comes amid moves to establish the AIDS surveillance centre as an autonomous centre under an assistant professor. This is in spite of the fact that some time back, the College Committee of Management had decided against granting autonomy or relocation of the surveillance unit, it is pointed out.

Sources say establishment of a separate surveillance centre was outside the ambit of NACO funding and would only serve to duplicate HIV testing infrastructure besides causing superfluous economic burden on the Government. In fact, the NACO scheme specifically envisages the VCTCs to continue with the on-going sentinel surveillance, which is undertaken between August and October every year, it is pointed out.

At present, the microbiology department laboratory conducts HIV tests on 50 to 60 samples every week with the staff deployed on a rotation basis to offset staff shortage as well as to improve authenticity of the analysis. The NACO had already supplied the Department a Rs. 3.50 lakhs fully automatic Elisa reader, which is now in disuse owing to suspected sabotage. The inquiry into the damaging of the new equipment has reached nowhere, sources say.

Meanwhile, according to an AIDS Control Society official, what is most consternating about the delay in switching over to VCTCs at the Medical College is that none of the standard excuses, funds, space or staff, apply in this regard.

Meanwhile, the move to set up VCTCs in other Medical Colleges and all districts of the State has also been drawing a lukewarm response from the officials concerned.

The NACO programme aimed at setting up VCTCs in all districts, either at district hospitals or public health laboratories.

So far, the State AIDS Control Society has been able to set up only one VCTC attached to the Public Health Laboratory here as opposed to the plans for setting up at least nine such centres in the State.

``The VCTCs are expected to provide a closer picture of community-level HIV prevalence," an AIDS Control Society Official said.

According to latest data available with the Kerala State Aids Control Society (KSACS), sentinel surveillance surveys indicate a HIV prevalence of between 0-0.5 per cent among ante-natal cases, or pregnant women screened at selected Government hospitals, besides a 2.8 to 7.6 per cent among STD cases.

Based on this data, it is now estimated that there may be more than 70,000 HIV-infected people in the State.

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