YRGCARE Medical Centre has provided medical care and psychosocial support for over 21,000 persons with HIV disease in Chennai and from across Southern India since January 1994.
The Centre offers the following services:
The centre has an inpatient facility (including acute care) . Over 25,000 walk-in clients have received voluntary counseling and testing since 1994.
YRGCARE Medical centre collaborates with Sankara Nethralaya for eye care, Ragas Dental College for dental care, RIGID/Lifeline hospital for Gastroenterology care, with Cancer Institute for management of malignancy, with Kamakshi Memoral hospital for ENT, kidney and haematological care and with SRMC for kidney care.
The outpatient clinic is open between 8.30 am and 4.00pm Mondays through Saturdays. About 80 to 100 persons attend the clinic everyday, of which 7-10 are new patients. The center has 7 physicians trained in HIV Medicine.
The centre offers counseling relating to HIV testing and diagnosis (pre and post test counseling) as well as other support counseling for individuals, couples, and families. Support counseling involves treatment and adherence counseling, and other psychosocial support measures such as marriage counseling and theprevention of HIV transmission from mother to child. The center has 5 counsellors, trained in HIV counseling..
Trained nutritionists offer nutrition advice and counseling programs to patients and their caregivers at the out patient clinic and provides wholesome food to the inpatients…
The center runs a subsidized pharmacy. Antiretroviral drugs, drugs for opportunistic infections and co-infections, Antivirals for HCV and other medications as needed are dispensed with adherence counseling.
The centre provides medical care , psychosocial support and skills development programs for children infected with HIV. More than 200 children and adolescents with HIV are followed up. More Info
Laboratory testing for patients is performed at the YRGCARE laboratory.
Chennai Antiviral Research and Treatment Clinical Research Site (CART CRS) is the centre’s clinical trials unit which conducts clinical, epidemiological, psychosocial and biomedical research studies in collaboration with several institutions in India and overseas. These include: National Institutes of Health-USA; University of California-San Diego, USA; Brown University, USA;; Harvard University, USA; Johns Hopkins University, USA;; Stanford University, USA; University of California-San Francisco, USA; Kirby Institute, University of New South Wales-Sydney; Karolinska Institute-Sweden; National Institute for Research in Tuberculosis/ICMR-Chennai; National AIDS Research Institute/ICMR-Pune; Sankara Nethralaya Eye Hospital-Chennai; Ragas Dental College-Chennai.
CART CRS is one of the sites for Therapeutics Clinical Trials of IADS Clinical Trials Group of National institutes of Health ACTG/NIH, Prevention Trials of HIV Prevention Trials Network of National Institutes of Health HPTN/NIH,START study of International Network for Strategic Initiatives in Global HIV Trials (INSIGHT)/NIH, AIDS Malignancy Consortium (AMC) studies of National Cancer Institute (NCI), European Union ( EU )funded clinical trials and Americal Foundation for AIDS Research(AmFar)/NIH supported large observational Natural History study.
There are 50 medical, paramedical and research staff (Investigators, study physicians, research coordinators ,research nurses, QA/QC personnel, study pharmacist, study participant retention staff, study counselors,Regulatory staff, data management staff, research admin staff) at the medical centre. For details of the studies, click here.
The center conducts an annual anti-retroviral treatment (ART) symposium called CART (Chennai ART Symposium). Collaborators and renowned researchers from different parts of world serve as faculty, with 250-300 physicians and researchers who are involved in HIV care and research attending.
Practical training for the diagnosis and management of opportunistic and co-infections, co-mprbidities and on the usage of Antiretroviral therapy is provided for physicians at the YRGCARE Medical Centre. Interns, Medical and Public health students from other countries also participate in training and research programs.
YRGCARE runs a outpatient clinical program in collaboration with Indian Red Cross in Nellore. This clinic is operational between Monday and Saturday between 8 am to 4 pm. A trained physician and counselors are available for medical and psychosocial care. Also facilities to do CD4, Viral Load and HIV disease management-related investigations can be carried out. A subsidized pharmacy is also located inside the clinic.