DHADING: Bereft of a service centre that will provide antiretroviral therapy (ART) in the district itself, HIV patients in Dhading are compelled to make a long and expensive journey to faraway places to get the freebie.

It is suspected that there are around 1,000 HIV/AIDs victims in the entire district, most of whom are yet to be identified and fear the social stigma they are in for upon being diagnosed with the fatal disease.

Stakeholders attribute the increasing number of HIV patients to the growing trend among youth to leave home for foreign employment and indulgence in unsafe sex, drug addiction and the flourishing flesh trade, mainly along the highways.

“It’s unfortunate that we don’t have an ARV service centre in the district despite the fact that the district is home to a number of the HIV victims, which might well cross thousand,” lamented a patient, saying they have to reach as far as Pokhara, Kathmandu, Bharatpur or Nuwakot to take the cost-free ARV drugs and services.

Dhading’s senior public health officer Mohammad Daud stressed the need of an ARV centre in the district itself. “There are so many patients and they have to go a long way to get the services and drugs. So it would be better if a service centre was set up here,” he argued, adding, his office, however, was doing the needful to set up an ARV centre in the district soon.

HIMALAYAN NEWS SERVICE