Ref: AIDS War: Who is on the right track

[Guest guest]

This is in reference to Joy's posting and the original article in Mumbai Times

(TOI).

Unfortunately, though not all, most of what has been said is true. There is a

lot of money in AIDS. Some years ago someone had said " There are more people

surviving on AIDS than dieing of AIDS " . Unforunately no one knows how to

identify what is good and what is bad. Just the number of NGOs, the amount of

money spent and the number of patients does not make a coherent data.

If one has to go by the cost effectiveness of the programs run, even the big

organizations ( with the government at the top of the list) will not pass the

test. If left to the NGOs they will resort to advertising to prove themselves (

and as one knows advertising means telling half truths!) Now if the money is to

be well spent there needs to be an independent body to scrutinize the work of

NGOs. For good work it need not always be the NGOs approaching the funding

agencies, it could be the otherway roun. There could be some organizations doing

excellent work without getting even a single grant from the govt.

Hope the dabate sparked off leads to something constructive and is not just a

sensationalizing article published in the TOI.

Vinay Kulkarni

e-MAIL:<prayashealth@...>

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