From: udcrusd@meaddata.com (Sylvia D'Cruz)
Subject: India  launches first major anti-AIDS campaign
Organization: Mead Data Central, Dayton OH
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 15:30:51 GMT
Distribution: soc.culture.indian

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                     Copyright 1992 Agence France Presse
                              Agence France Presse

                               September  3, 1992

India  launches first major anti-AIDS campaign

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    Faced with the threat of an AIDS epidemic,  India  is launching a 100
million dollar campaign in its first major effort to fight the deadly disease.

    The nationwide project, partly funded by an 85 million dollar World Bank
soft loan and approved by the cabinet this month, gets underway six years after
a Madras prostitute became the first known victim of Acquired Immune Deficiency
Syndrome (AIDS) in  India.

    Since then, "the situation has turned quite alarming," said Pronab Ranjan
Dasgupta, director of the National AIDS Control Organisation.

    If unchecked,  India  could soon have the worst AIDS problem in Asia if not
the world, he said. Within Asia, prevalence of the disease in  India  is now
believed to be second only to Thailand.

    Some 109 Indians have died of AIDS and 112 are afflicted by the full-blown
disease, which destroys the body's immune system and is spread through sexual
relations or contaminated blood.

    Another 8,578 have tested positive for the human immuno-deficiency virus
(HIV) that leads to AIDS, Dasgupta said, citing the results of 1.5 million blood
tests carried out since 1986.

    The figures, most experts and agencies believe, are only the tip of the
iceberg. The World Health Organisation (WHO), which has put  India  on red
alert, estimates some 400,000 of  India's  860 million people are HIV-positive.

    T. Jacob John, an Indian AIDS expert who serves on a WHO AIDS panel, has
said a random study indicates some 2.5 million Indians are carrying the virus.

    "Our data base is very small, limited to what we get from the clinics and
blood banks," said Dasgupta, acknowledging that official statistics may not
reflect reality.

    "It is not widely representative of the disease's prevalence. But the
figures we have are serious enough," he told AFP.

    One of his objectives is to enlarge AIDS surveillance in  India.

    The largest chunk, or one third, of his budget will go towards setting up
AIDS counselling and education centers and spreading AIDS-literacy and safe sex
via the mass media, in a country where awareness of the disease remains
frighteningly low.

    One member of parliament recently stumped the health ministry by asking it
to clarify whether AIDS was transmitted by mosquitoes, while Dasgupta knew of
several educated Indians who stopped going to barbers' shops for fear of
catching the disease.

    Many, even in the medical community, believe they can contract AIDS by
shaking hands with sufferers, he said.

    In one celebrated instance last year, New Delhi's premier All  India
Institute of Medical Sciences had to summon a midwife from outside to deliver
the baby of an AIDS carrier after hospital staff refused.

    At the other end of the ignorance scale, prostitutes in Bombay's notorious
Falkland Road have resisted using condoms on the grounds that their clients'
sexual satisfaction would be affected.

    The toughest task now facing the government is to break the information
barrier and spread the anti-AIDS message in the largely-illiterate country,
Dasgupta said.

    "We are going into an uncharted area," he said. "It is not like in the West
where people everywhere have access to the print and electronic media and where
spreading awareness is easy. Our socio-economic conditions are different."

    Nine top advertising agencies and famous movie director Shyam Benegal have
been commissioned to prepare an awareness campaign and an AIDS video.

    Behavioural scientists are working on how best to get the message across to
sensitive high-risk groups like prostitutes and homosexuals.

    "What kind of an argument will make sense to a prostitute -- we are working
on that," said Dasgupta. "You can't do it from a pulpit by taking the high moral
ground. You have to speak in the language they understand."

    The program also aims at promoting condoms for safe sex, improving the
safety of blood and blood products used in transfusion, upgrading clinics
dealing with venereal disease and ensuring better hospital hygiene.

    Dasgupta likens the fight against AIDS to the family planning effort
launched in the 1950's to restrict population. That largely failed, but  India
cannot afford to lose the anti-AIDS fight, experts warn.

    "In a way we are now entering an area that is even more intimate than family
planning. It will not be easy," Dasgupta said.
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