The Hindu Business Line : A CRISP initiative to fight HIV/AIDS

GATI Ltd, the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI), the Hyderabad-based SHARE MediCiti and Metro Foundation of US have joined hands to wage a war spread across 15 States of the country on HIV/AIDS.

The initiative, called CRISP, will address the risk of HIV infection in truck drivers. It will be launched during August on a pilot scale in Ahmedabad and Hyderabad to start with, said Dr Vijay V. Yeldandi of the AAPI.

Gati Ltd, which reaches 585 out of the 620 districts in the country, would provide the seed funding and logistic support. The AAPI will chip in with expertise from its large number of member-doctors on the latest in HIV and the SHARE MediCiti, Hospitals and Metro Foundation would collaborate in a big way, Dr Yeldandi told Business Line.

Plans are to cover at least 2,000 truck drivers in the 15 States in the first phase of the study.

In Phase two, effort would be made to reach their partners, and in phase three their close friends and relatives. The first pilot in Ahmedabad and Hyderabad is expected to be completed over the next six months and then the programme would be expanded to 3-4 more centres in a year, he said.

Dr Yeldandi, who is Chairman HIV/AIDS Committee of the AAPI, said Gati had approached them to design a programme targeting truck drivers.

"We discussed with our Association, Metro Foundation and the SHARE Mediciti Hospitals, which has an ongoing study and research programmes on the feasibility and designed the CRISP project".

The AAPI has 40,000 doctors of Indian origin in the US. Interestingly, they come from most of the States of India. This diversity is being utilised to spread the programme in the 15 States. NRI doctors from a particular State will be made collaborators with local organisations to make the programme move fast and effectively, he said.

The AAPI will share medical expertise and also raise funding for the project. It proposes to partner with Health Care Providers to build collaborative programmes and establish five centres of excellence in the North, East, West, Central and Southern regions.

Each Centre would be equipped with a laboratory dedicated to support the needs of testing and care of persons with HIV as well as serve as a nucleus for clinical care, education and research, Dr Yeldandi, who was in Hyderabad conducting an update programme on HIV/AIDS, said.

Linked by a Web portal, they will provide logistics support for arranging confidential testing as well as supply of anti-retroviral therapy.

This would help in tracking the epidemic and its effect in real time to facilitate resource allocation planning. This model has been validated by MediCiti Hospital's, Hyderabad through its REACH programme, he said.

Dr Yeldandi said another objective is to help create a viable private healthcare financing mechanism in the Indian context.