‘AIDS screening centres set up in all 38 jails of Punjab’

LAHORE: The Punjab AIDS Control Programme (PACP) announced a factsheet outlining its progress in response to multiple queries about performance monitoring exercises undertaken during the last one-and-a-half year.

According to a handout issued here on Monday, as per PACP spokesman, the programme director, Dr Asim Altaf, said, “In the period under question, one stage may not reflect a holistic picture vis-à-vis targets. As we move towards closing stages, only consolidated data may reflect a true picture of physical and financial target met by the program.”

The programme has opened screening centres in all 38 jails of the province, besides opening new centres in Chiniot, Kot Imrana, Jalalpur and Multan. More new centres are in the process. These centres were not documented in monitoring reports gathered in first half of the year 2018, the director said.

“After a pilot of the MIS in the year 2016-17, the PACP developed it further on the basis of lessons learnt. The data of transgenders and female sex workers was not yet transferred from the older version to new version, one set of data from previous MIS was picked in one validation report. The consolidated data in the new MIS is available now. The true figures of female sex workers are over 11,000 and not 2000,” he added

“We have screened over 89,000 jail inmates for HIV, Hep, C, syphilis and other diseases. Among the jail population, between 20 to 30pc prisoners are injecting drug users, or serving term for drugs related offences. We have catered to around 20,000 injection drug users in jail, but the figure was not reflected in consolidated data then. One report quoted the figures at less than 500, which we are trying to correct. Overall, the coverage in jail screening component was over achieved, standing at 112pc. We are in touch with the parent department as well as monitoring bodies to rectify and correct a few statistics that were not yet in the consolidated form. Through collaborative efforts with other vertical programs, we have screened over 174,000 TB patients for HIV against the target of 210,000 so far. But in one report, the figures were reported less than 1,000 which was out of context and did not take into account the larger picture,” he explained.

“Given the financial constraints, the PACP was still able to do low cost outbreak investigations with technical support of WHO in Chiniot and Kot Imrana between 2016 and 2018. We are in the process of rectifying the documentation and reporting inaccuracies with the relevant departments. For true picture, the PACP may be contacted for any queries,” Dr Asim Altaf added.

The Programme was part of Health Weeks activities in 2017 and 2018 across Punjab. During the health Week 2017, as many as 236,246 people were tested for HIV, Hep B, C and Syphilis. In the 2018 Health Week 667,424 people were tested for HIV. Punjab is also on track in meeting its Sustainable Development Goals targets, which envisage keeping the HIV epidemic at less than 0.1pc.