Country prepares to take the fight
against AIDS into the next millennium
The Government of India on Wednesday launched the second phase of the National AIDS Control Project, calling all sections of society to address ''the biggest health challenges facing the country in the next millennium.''
Inaugurating the project, deputy chairman of the Planning Commission K C Pant said the foremost task before the nation was to build mechanisms to integrate AIDS programmes with the ongoing health initiatives at district and state levels.
Observing that HIV infection cases in India were likely to treble from 3.5 million today to 10 million in the next decade, Pant said the government was abreast of the situation and had set in motion certain steps to tackle it.
''The ninth plan focuses attention on a number of initiatives including increasing the reach and spread of the HIV network, improving hospital waste management to check the spread of HIV infection and strengthening surveillance,'' he said.
Earlier, Union Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare N T Shanmugam said the biggest thrust area of the second phase of the project was promotion of awareness among the public both in urban and rural areas.
Noting that 85 to 90 per cent of the total HIV infections in India are transmitted sexually, he underlined the need to promote safe sex.
''In the first phase which started on December 1 (AIDS Day) and comes to an end today, we targeted 50 per cent of the districts in the country with a population of 200 to 250 million people in the reproductive age group,'' he said.
Representatives of funding agencies which are collaborating with the Union government in the National AIDS Programme such as the World Bank, UNAIDS, DFID and USAID were also present at the launch function.
Peter Haywood of the World Bank said the emphasis of the
second phase was to reach the high risk groups, while simultaneously
contacting and sensitising low-risk groups and providing care for
the infected. For this effort both public and private sector
response was essential and this phase would attempt to strengthen
that response, he added.
Others who spoke on the occasion included National Aids Control Project director
Prasada Rao, secretary health Javed Chaudhary, director general of
health services S P Agarwal, Gordon Alexander of UNAIDS, US
ambassador Richard Celeste and Rody Lalmingmawii, an
HIV-infected activist from Manipur, who gave a moving account of her
ordeal in dealing with the infection and resultant social
ostracism.
UNI
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