Soon, three medical colleges in Rajasthan will have machines to test the HIV/AIDS patients for Viral Load. It will be a parallel expansion to the ‘Viral load testing for all people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHIV)’ initiative launched by the Union ministry of health and family welfare on February 26 this year, under which samples are being collected at ART centres and sent to Mumbai for testing. The initiative was rolled out in Rajasthan on April 9, before that, the patients in the state had to go to New Delhi or Ahmedabad for the test.
“Three Viral Load testing machines will be set up at government medical colleges in Jaipur, Jodhpur and Udaipur,” Dr SS Chauhan, director, Rajasthan State AIDS Control Society (RSACS) told DNA. “Each machine costs Rs 90 lakh, and these are being supplied by National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO). The process of installation is on and they will start functioning from next month,” he added.
Viral Load is the test to measure amount of HIV in blood, used to monitor the effectiveness of Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) over time. HIV attacks and destroys CD4 cells that provides immunity in human. PLHIV having a CD4 count below 200 are susceptible to develop serious illnesses. Viral load testing, by measuring the amount of virus in a patient’s blood, tells whether the ART treatment regimen is working or not.
“In more than 95% cases, after six month of ART treatment, the Viral Load becomes undetectable. In many cases the patient also becomes drug-resistant after treatment and thus the viral load increases. With the test, detection of the increase of the virus in patient’s blood after treatment becomes possible,” said Dr Chauhan.
UNAID report
According to the report of UNAIDS, released last year, India has the third largest population of people with HIV after South Africa and Nigeria. As per data from Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in 2017, there were total 21.06 lakh estimated HIV/AIDS infected people in India and the number in Rajasthan was 1,06 lakh. Total HIV/AIDS related deaths in India were 31,453 and out of which 1,044 deaths took place in Rajasthan.
