Condom Use Will Spearhead AIDS Campaign. Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss

[Guest guest]

[Moderators note: What is Hon. Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss

trying to convey? A narrowly focused strategy of 'Wear A Condom',

instead of a much broader perspective on Prevention, including

linking Prevention to Treatment, and striving towards Universal

Access to Prevention?. And, what is the phrase below mean, 'AIDS

sufferers?' is it ministers own words?]

India's Ramadoss Says Condom Use Will Spearhead AIDS Campaign

By Mrinalini Datta

Sept. 1 (Bloomberg) -- India will promote condoms as the best

defense against HIV/AIDS in a $2.5 billion program to prevent it

spreading from more than 5 million Indians already carrying the

virus, Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss said.

The five-year program, funded by the government, companies, aid

agencies and charities including the Bill & Melinda Gates

Foundation, aims to prevent infection as 86 percent of India's cases

are sexually transmitted, Ramadoss said.

" Eighty percent of the money and focus will go for prevention, "

Ramadoss said in an interview in his New Delhi office on Aug. 30.

" I say hit the condom directly " as the major preventative method.

India has 5.7 million people with human immunodeficiency virus, more

than any other country, according to UNAIDS, a United Nations

agency. Unless it's checked, HIV/AIDS could slow India's economic

growth by 0.86 percentage points between 2002 and 2016, the UN's

Development Program said in a July report.

AIDS-related illnesses and deaths will increase health spending in

the world's second-most-populous country, and shrink labor supply,

leading to a drop in productivity, the UNDP said.

HIV/AIDS affects 0.9 percent of adults in India, which has a total

population of 1.1 billion. In South Africa, 18.8 percent of adults

are infected, UNAIDS said in its Global AIDS Epidemic report in May.

To date, 124,000 sufferers in India have disclosed their illness to

authorities, Ramadoss said. India's infection rate is underreported

because of the discrimination and social isolation that plagues

those afflicted, he said. The government is counting on anti-

discrimination policies and public awareness programs to encourage

infected people to admit they have the disease and to seek

treatment.

Anti-discrimination Policies

A bill aimed at banning HIV/AIDS discrimination in workplaces,

treatment centers and educational institutions may be debated in

parliament as early as November, Ramadoss said.

While unprotected heterosexual intercourse is the main cause of

infection in India, in northern and eastern states, injecting drug

use is the biggest cause.

The most affected states are Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra

Pradesh in the south, Maharashtra in the west and Nagaland and

Manipur in the north-east. The states account for 72 percent of the

estimated HIV infections in the country, according to India's

National AIDS Control Organization. The government agency estimates

the number of HIV infected Indians last year at 5.2 million.

Lack of education is a challenge in fighting HIV in India's rural

areas. About two-thirds of country dwellers are familiar with

condoms, compared with 80 percent of the country's urban population.

" We have spent a whole load of money on awareness, " Ramadoss

said. " But the actual usage of condoms, that's my problem. That's

what we're trying to tackle now. "

Vending Machines

The government has installed 11,000 condom vending machines in

colleges, such as New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, and in

restrooms at railway stations, gas stations, roadside eateries and

hospitals. It plans to have 100,000 vending machines by the end of

next year, Ramadoss said.

It plans to expand surveillance units to 1,200 by next year from

about 700. The number of centers providing counseling, testing,

treatment, and antenatal checkups will almost double to 5,000 in two

years, from 2,875 at present, Ramadoss said.

The government aims to treat 100,000 AIDS sufferers free by 2007,

from 45,000 now. In five years, the number receiving free treatment

is planned to triple to 300,000, he said. By the end of this month

the number of centers dispensing antiretroviral drugs will reach 100

from 60.

The government's AIDS control agency has enough medicine to treat

90,000 people and has spent the past six months training doctors and

nurses and installing equipment, Ramadoss said.

Gates Foundation

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is among groups building AIDS

awareness by targeting educational institutions, sex workers, truck

drivers and migrant laborers, using television advertising and media

campaigns, and road shows.

In 2003, Bill Gates, the world's richest man, doubled donations to

India for preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS to $200 million. Former

U.S. President Bill Clinton last year introduced a program to train

150,000 Indian physicians working in private practice to care for

sufferers.

Efforts to educate the public about how to avoid contagion have

slowed the spread of the disease. The prevalence of the AIDS virus

unexpectedly declined in southern India, helped by the use of

condoms among sex workers, according to a study published in the

Lancet on March 30.

The prevalence of HIV-1 decreased by more than a third in young

women in south India, the journal said, citing Rajesh Kumar, a

medical professor at the School of Public Health in Chandigarh,

India, who studied data from about 294,000 women and 59,000 men aged

between 15 and 34 years.

To contact the reporters on this story:

Mrinalini Datta in New Delhi at mdatta1@...

Foxwell in New Delhi at sfoxwell@... .

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