Following the incident of labelling of an HIV patient in Guru Govind Singh Government Hospital in Jamnagar, the authorities in medical colleges and hospitals in Gujarat have been asked to hold training programmes for the hospital staff about handling HIV patients.

In the wake of the incident, in which a pregnant woman was paraded around the hospital with a sticker reading ‘HIV positive’ on her forehead, the Department of Health and Gujarat State AIDS Control Society (GSACS) have directed all the medical colleges and government hospitals to organise the training for all the hospital staff.

A recent meeting was held through video conferencing of all the deans, medical superintendents and matrons of government medical colleges and hospitals. There, the hospital authorities were asked to take measures so as to prevent incidents like the one in Jamnagar.

“Such incidents occur due to insensitivity and insecurity among the staff members who are not fully aware about the disease,” said Pradeep Kumar, additional project director, GSACS.

He added, “The staff should be periodically trained on what HIV/ AIDS is and how they are supposed to handle HIV positive patients.”

The training has been scheduled for this month in Sir Sayajirao General Hospital.

The nodal officer of the M S University’s ART Centre and associate professor of Department of Medicine, Mahendra Parmar, said, “The training will be held once a year for all the staff right from Class I to Class IV workers. The training will also be given to resident doctors, nurses and paramedical staff.’

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