Mumbaikars may no longer have to go to government hospitals for the Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART) that people living with HIV have to be administered.
The Humsafar Trust, an LGBTQIA+ community non-profit in the city, on Thursday inaugurated the country’s first integrated community-based HIV treatment centre and clinic. The centre is supported by the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) and Family Health International 360.
The centre will not only facilitate access to treatment among the most-at-risk communities, including transgenders and sex workers, but also provide the free HIV medications distributed by NACO.
Ashok Row Kavi, founder, Humsafar Trust, said, they had to earlier refer clients to government hospitals for ART. “ART requires a special setting, something that only government hospitals had until recently. We can now provide that here. We are going to further facilitate uptake of treatment and care among communities that are marginalised and continue to face stigma and discrimination,” he said.
“This centre can now diagnose, provide the pills, carry out testing and assessment and provide counselling and ART therapy all under one roof,” Mr. Kavi said. While the centre will have doctors in charge of medical issues, it will have other clinicians for assessment, a counsellor to take down the sexual history and pre-and-post-text counselling, and paramedics.
Mr. Kavi said, “Condom usage is going down in the country and within the community. Besides, only condoms are not making any difference. The other option is pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). But PrEP has to be done in close collaboration with condom use.”
Mr. Kavi also called for developing more of such centres. “In a country of 1 billion, having only one centre is insufficient. We have to take away the pressure from the public health facilities,” he said.