Raipur, Dec 1 (IANS) Chhattisgarh has about 5,000 AIDS patients, the government said Tuesday announcing plans to set up 100 testing and counselling centres for detecting people living with the HIV/AIDS virus.
The AIDS testing centres will be set up in all the 18 districts of the state by next year, a senior health department official said.

“The number of AIDS patients are rising in the state. We have so far 4,975 confirmed AIDS patients but these patients mostly belong to urban and semi-urban areas. We need to develop medical facilities in the interiors to detect people living with HIV/AIDS virus,” Health Department Secretary Vikas Sheel told IANS.

“We have less figure of known AIDS patients of interiors and poverty-hit districts such as Dantewada. The government now plans to boost facilities in remote areas to detect more and more people living with the deadly HIV virus,” he said.

He said the state has just one Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART) Centre based in state capital Raipur but soon centres will also be set up in Bilaspur, Durg and Jagdalpur towns.