Condom machines at borders

September 5, 2006

Vishwa Mohan, [5 Sep, 2006 0044hrs IST TIMES NEWS NETWORK ]

NEW DELHI: The day is not far when barracks of paramilitary forces

on border outposts will be equipped with condom vending machines.

The idea is to save personnel from HIV/AIDS, which has already

trapped 986 of them.

Realising the `needs' of personnel posted in far-flung areas, the

government has decided to install nearly 1,000 such machines at

different places in Jammu and Kashmir, the North-Eastern states and

also along the western border in Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat by

the end of the year.

A senior home ministry official said: " The urgency of such a step

was felt when we stumbled upon figures showing an increase of nearly

100 HIV positive cases among jawans over the last two years. As

compared to 885 positive cases reported in 2005, the paramilitary

forces recorded 986 such cases till July this year. "

But the figures show only those cases which have been reported so

far. Top officials of the home ministry, assembled at a workshop on

prevention of HIV\AIDS in Central Police Forces (CPFs) last week,

encountered a different dimension of the menace. The participants

came to know that promiscuity and homosexuality do exist in the

forces, the way it exists in our civil society.

They discussed how the jawans, who have to remain at borders for

months away from their spouses, are a vulnerable lot as some of them

visit sex workers and therefore are prone to the infection.

Accepting that the time had come to encounter the situation in

a 'realistic manner', officials expressed the need to provide jawans

an easy accessibility to condoms - the most potent tool to prevent

them from getting infected.

The three-day workshop, first of its kind in CPFs, was organised by

the National Security Guard (NSG), which also played an important

role in finalising the government's action plan for HIV prevention.

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