Care, Support & Treatment
One of the major objectives of NACP-III is to provide greater care, support and treatment to larger number of PLHIV with ultimate goal of universal access for all those who need it. The Care, Support and Treatment component of NACP-III aims to provide comprehensive management to PLHIV with respect to prevention and treatment of Opportunistic Infections including TB, Anti-retroviral Therapy (ART), psychosocial support, positive prevention and impact mitigation.
Infrastructure:
The ART service in West Bengal started in 2005 and since then, the programme has been scaled up both in terms of facilities for treatment and number of beneficiaries seeking ART. The ART centres are established mainly in the Medicine Departments of Medical colleges and District Hospitals in the Government Sector. However, some ART centres are functioning in the sub- district hospitals also mainly in high prevalence districts.
ART Centres:
There are currently 15 functional ART centres as on March 2015. Out of total 15 ART centres, 8 are in Government Medical Colleges, 5 in District Hospitals and 2 are in Sub divisional Hospitals. In addition, the State has Centre of Excellence (COE) at School of Tropical Medicine (STM), Kolkata and Paediatric Centre of Excellence (pCOE) in HIV Care at Medical College & Hospital, Kolkata.
LAC & LAC Plus:
A total of 26 LAC were made functional till March 2014 and another 5 (Kalyani Medical College & Hospital, Basirhat SDH, Contai SDH, Bishnupur SDH and Purulia District Hospital) will start functioning very shortly. Among these 31 LACs, 3 are functioning as LAC plus (Bankura Sammilani Medical College & Hospital, Domjur Rural Hospital & Barasat District Hospital) and another 1 (Asansol Sub Divisional Hospital) will start functioning as LAC plus very soon.
CSC:
There are 5 Care Support Centres (CSC) providing counselling on ARV drug adherence and early linkage to ART centres, expanded positive prevention activities, improved social protection and wellbeing of PLHIVs and strengthened community systems and reduced stigma and discrimination. Besides, there are 13 Help Desk for PLHIVs to provide nutritional support, counselling, legal support etc.
Centre of Excellence (COE):
Centre of Excellence (COE) was set up in 1st December, 2008 to provide comprehensive tertiary level health care services to PLHAs. SACEP has been formed at COE, which meets once in a week to screen eligibility for second line and alternate first line treatment among the suspected treatment failure cases on first line ART from the states of West Bengal, Orissa, Jharkhand, Chhatishgarh, Sikkim and Assam. The second line ART was started at COE from 1st December, 2008 and by March 2014, 389 PLHAs were included in second line treatment, out of 389 suspected treatment failure cases on 1st line referred and of them 343 are alive on 2nd line treatment.
Other than this, NDLS (National Distance Learning Seminar) and RDLS (Regional Distance Learning Seminar) are regularly organized by COE on very interesting and useful topics related to HIV.
For tackling the 1st line failure cases and research activity on CLHIV the paediatric Centre of Excellence (pCOE) came functional during 2014-15 at Medical College & Hospital, Kolkata.