Mumbai, March 8: In a first, country’s first HIV treatment centre and holistic clinic for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) community opened in Mumbai on Friday. The community clinic was opened by Humsafar Trust, which has been creating awareness about the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), among the gay men, male sex workers and transgenders for the last 20 years.

According to the information given by the trust’s office in Mumbai, the community clinic would provide free counselling and provide Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART). Along with this, the centre would serve as a one-stop centre where pre-counselling, detection, advice and treatment of HIV patients would be done. UK Patient Cleared of AIDS after Receiving Bone Marrow Resistant to HIV; Is A Cure Near? 

Informing more, Ashok Row Kavi of Humsafar Trust said, as reported by Hindustan Times, “Until now we would get testing done for the community members at our centre. If tested positive for the disease, they would be asked to go to Sion Hospital, but there was a huge dropout (rate) there. Because of how the community is perceived outside, a lot of these people wouldn’t seek treatment.”

Dr Srikala Acharya of Mumbai District AIDS Control Society stated that there had been a sharp decrease over the number of HIV patients in the last 20 years. She said, “Out of 4,000 males who have sex with men who are screened regularly by us, only 253 tested positive according to recent figures.”

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Mar 08, 2019 10:00 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).