CCEA okays utilisation of $ 128 m grant from Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, Malaria

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) at its meeting here yesterday gave its nod for the utilisation of a grant of Rs 609.91 crore ($ 128.4 million) approved by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM).

The grant is for implementing a project for scaling up of integrated counselling and testing, prevention of parent to child transmission of HIV (PPTCT) services and referral to care, support and treatment services for people living with HIV in India. The funding will be entirely through GFATM, an official press release said here.

According to the release, the project aims to cover 60% of HIV positive pregnant women in the country with PPTCT services and to diagnose and refer for treatment 70% of patients co-infected with HIV/TB. The project also seeks to strengthen capacity building, quality assurance, and supply chain systems under the National AIDS Control Programme.

The release said the mother to child route is the second most common mode of transmission of HIV, after the heterosexual route, and accounts for 5.4% of all HIV infections in India. It is estimated that 0.48% of the antenatal mothers in India are HIV Infected which translates to nearly 65,000 HIV infected pregnant mothers per year.

The PPTCT programme aims to prevent mother to child transmission of HIV by providing the HIV infected pregnant women and their new born babies with a single dose of prophylactic Nevirapine (NVP).

The release said the project also seeks to consolidate the gains achieved in the past five years in the delivery of counselling and testing services, PPTCT and HIV-TB collaboration and further scale up these services so as to diagnose 65% of the estimated HIV positive population in India and link them with prevention, care and treatment services over a period of three years.

To reach this goal the number of Integrated Counselling and Testing Centres (ICTCs) will be increased from the existing 6,300 to 10,700. This scale-up will be mainly through the facility integrated model in government health facilities such as PHCs and in the private sector health system through public private partnerships.

The benefits of this project will be a major contribution to the overall National AIDS Control Programme (NACP) - III goal of halting and reversing the HIV epidemic in India. The project will prevent HIV transmission and mitigate the impact of HIV by expanding access to counselling and PPTCT services, strengthening inter-programme linkages, especially HIV and TB collaboration, and integrating HIV services with general health system.

The accomplishment of the goals of the project will result in a substantial mitigation of the socio-economic impact of the HIV epidemic and will indirectly result in poverty reduction. People living with HIV/AIDS in India will specifically benefit as they will be diagnosed early and linked with prevention, care, support and treatment services, the release added.

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