The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Tiruchi News : Peer educators' initiative in combating AIDS

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Mar 30, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Tiruchi

Peer educators' initiative in combating AIDS

By Our Staff Reporter

Peer educators enacting a play on HIV/AIDS interventional strategies, as part of a three-day conference in Tiruchi on Monday. — Photo: M. Moorthy

TIRUCHI, MARCH 29. "I have taken blood test on my own volition to rule out HIV infliction," says Ebenezer, a peer educator on HIV/AIDS in a Tiruchi slum.

"I have ensured that my family members and friends have undertaken blood tests to keep the disease at bay," said Kanagaraj, another peer educator.

Such interventional initiatives by peer educators, comprising slum residents, were considered significant (amid a deteriorating situation) by government departments and non-governmental organisations alike today at the culmination of a three-day conference on `HIV/AIDS Intervention Among Slum Population', organised here by People's Development Initiatives (PDI), identified by APAC, the funding agency, as a demonstration centre.

The APAC relies on intervention by peer educators not only to make an impact of its awareness exercises among high risk sections, particularly commercial sex workers and migrant workers, but also to impress upon the society that people with HIV infliction must be accepted as equals in the society, said T. Ilanchezhian, Senior Technical Officer, APAC Technology Research Group for Targeted Intervention, at the first of the 10 interventional conferences planned in the State, after releasing the conference souvenir.

The services of peer educators are particularly felt in Tiruchi district, which is second to Namakkal in Tamil Nadu, for high incidences of HIV infliction, what with three to five new HIV-positive cases being reported everyday, according to N. Balasubramaniam of the Department of Dermatovenerology, K.A.P. Viswanatham Government Medical College Hospital.

His reasoning was that if AIDS incidences kept soaring in the district despite the fact that it has no cure, it was a reflection on the low level of awareness.

Identifying peer educators among the high-risk population and deploying them for wiping out the menace in their respective communities would fetch desired results, Dr. Balasubramaniam said, to an audience comprising peer educators from various slums in the district.

Echoing the same, the Deputy Director of Health Services, K. Mathivanan, said peer educators could be effective with their one-to-one approach, and bring about behavioural changes among the targeted sections, either to be moralistic, desisting from pre-marital and extra-marital relationships, or to adopt safe sex practices (using condoms) in the order of priority.

Enormous sums of money spent on AIDS awareness indicated the Government's keenness to protect the productive population from the clutches of the disease, and ward off the ignominy of economic collapse, observed the Dean of the KAP Viswanatham Government Medical College Hospital, G. Ramavelu. The role of medical community gets confined to treating HIV/AIDS patients without prejudice, but only the `knowledgeable lay people' could arrest the syndrome, he noted.

The main component of the conference was evolving of interventional strategies by the participants, who were divided into six groups based on their gender, age and marital status, said I. Anbalavanan, Secretary, PDI.

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