The doctors in North Karnataka, cautioned by the health and family Welfare Minister towards treating HIV/AIDS patients with compassion, and not to harass them.
The minister, R Ashok has announced that the government would take action against doctors harassing and denying treatment to HIV/AIDS patients. He made this announcement at a inauguration of the first anniversary celebration of ‘Ashodaya’, which is a community based organisation on Friday. He stated that there was reports that a few doctors in North Karnataka had denied treatment to HIV infected pregnant women.Stating that the government would spend Rs.40 crore on medicines, health education, counselling for HIV patients and for setting up voluntary counselling and testing centres, he revealed that the current statistics show that there are 5 lakh HIV patients in the State. He announced that the State has now been put on high alert for HIV prevalence and that most of the cases have been reported in a HIV infected area.
Mr. Ashok warned that the heartlessness nature in dealing with terrible and much hated disease would strike as a threat to the human resources especially in developing countries and would directly effect adversely the over all development of society.
Warning that the government would handle, the many fakes, and quacks who go around claiming to cure AIDS within 3-6 months, with an iron hand, he announced the plan of the state for recruiting counsellors, lab technicians and doctors, to strengthen voluntary counselling and for the opening of more testing centres for HIV/AIDS patients.
He also stated that the government will recruit 250 counsellors, 300 lab technicians and 11 doctors and would start 182 combined centres and 22 more HIV/TB centres across the State.
The minister praised Ashodaya for checking human trafficking and for their act of providing sex workers with food at cheaper rates to sex workers, he further stressed that it was the responsibility of both public and NGOs to check spread diseases. Calling upon the organisations and public to join hands to combat the dreaded disease, he explained that the government was reaching out to sex workers through NGOs as many of them face police and legal harassments.
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