Imphal, May 24: All the districts of Manipur will have ART (Anti-Retroviral Therapy) Centre by next year, said project director of the Manipur State AIDS Control Society (MACS) Dr Kh Pramodkumar.

Dr Kh Pramodkumar was speaking at an advocacy programme on "Needs and Rights of Women and Children Living with HIV/AIDS) with organised by the Manipur Positive Women Network under the sponsorship of Positive Women Network at the State Youth Centre.

People need not worry for treatment of HIV/AIDS in Manipur.

With ART centres already opened in Thoubal, Imphal East, Imphal West, Churachandpur, Chandel and Ukhrul districts, many people living with HIV are undergoing treatment at these centres, said the MACS project director.

He assured that similar ART centres would be opened in Bishnupur, Senapati, Tamenglong districts and also in Kangpokpi, Jiribam and Moreh sub-divisions by next year.

Quoting the objective of the National AIDS Control Society (NACO) that spreading of HIV in the country should be put under effective control by 2012, Pramodkumar claimed that necessary measures are being taken up in Manipur too so as to fulfil the objective of NACO.

Noting that treatment and awareness programmes should not be confined in district headquarters but cover remote and interior areas, the MACS director called upon all work sincerely toward this end.

The advocacy programme was also attended by president of Positive Women Network P Kausalya and vice-president of M Padmani Leima as functional president and guest of honour respectively.

P Kausalya said that women living with HIV/AIDS should not keep their problems to themselves.

Rather they should urged upon the Government to take up measures for their welfare.

Disclosing that she has been living with HIV/AIDS for the last 13 years, Kausalya measures to control HIV, treatment and welfare programmes for people living with HIV have been brought to mainstream in Chennai.

But this great stride was not made overnight.

It came after a sustained struggle by people living with HIV/AIDS there, she conveyed.

Later, Sobana of Nirvana Foundation spoke on social stigma and discrimination attached to WLHA and CLHA, UNAIDS State coordinator Sunil Huidrom on legal perspective on relations with WLHA and CLHA, P Kausalya on domestic violence face by WLHA and CLHA and S Padmani on social sports and its mechanism to tackle all the problems from time to time.

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