Ahmedabad: "Eighteen HIV positive people lost their lives in Kutch district of Gujarat not primarily due to the killer disease but mainly for want of medicines and lack of infrastructure in the state," according to AIDS activists.

Activists attribute the cause of disease to the government's apathy to better infrastructure as the state does not fall within the 'high prevelant zone' for AIDS affected people.

Alarmed by the figures, Gujarat government sent a medical team to Kutch to probe the matter while a team of AIDS activists had gone to Delhi to take up the matter with senior officials of the Union Health Ministry.

"The patients died one by one in the last four months due to non-availability of both first and second line of drugs required for HIV positive people in Kutch district. The closest place is either Surat or Ahmedabad", Umashankar Pande, an AIDS activist from Kutch who is one of the NGO members taking up the matter with New Delhi, told sources.