76 more HIV positive at Darbhanga

darbhanga: with the detection of 76 hiv positive cases between january 1 and march 31, 2002 at two local private pathological centres and at darbhanga medical college hospital (dmch)-based voluntary counselling and testing centre (vctc), the total number of people tested positive at darbhanga has gone up to 705. the highest number of hiv positive cases was detected at "sharma diagnostics", a private pathological centre here.according to dr jagdeo sharma of the sharma diagnostics, from january 1997 to december 2001, 479 people tested hiv positive at his clinic. another 40 hiv positive cases were detected between january and march this year, bringing the total number to 519 at his clinic. at the pathological unit of the local r b memorial hospital, till december last year, 150 people had tested hiv positive, said dr b n mishra of the hospital. between january and march this year, another 12 hiv positive cases were detected, bringing the total number to 162. according to dr vcs verma, principal of dmch, the vctc, sponsored by naco, started functioning on the dmch premises from january 1 this year. till march 31, 209 people came to the vctc for test, out of which 24 tested hiv positive. however, according to some doctors, the number of hiv positive cases would be much more, as wives and children of many of those tested hiv positive had not come for the test. at all the three centres, it has been found that majority of those detected hiv positive were working in mumbai, followed by kolkata and delhi. most of the detected cases belonged to the rural areas of darbhanga, madhubani and samastipur districts, said the doctors at the three centres. when contacted, dr mani bhushan shrivastav, civil surgeon of darbhanga, was unable to give the correct figure of those tested hiv positive, but said that the number of infected hiv positive case must have exceeded 700. he further said that awareness about the preventive aspects of the disease was being created by the district health administration.