HYDERABAD: Experience can be the best guru. And that is one proverb that the Andhra Pradesh State AIDS Control Society (APSACS) seems to have dutifully taken to heart.

The second phase of the Government's AIDS Awareness and Sustained Holistic Action (AASHA) campaign, which will begin on April 1, will have a motivated and trained army of a different sort taking the movement to the villages. The first `platoon' of this army, numbering 40, underwent training on Monday and Tuesday at Ramanthapur.

Visible force

Comprising persons who are actually living with HIV, this team will be the visible face of the State's war against HIV and AIDS what with APSACS believing that no one else can convey the anti-HIV message better than people who personally know what it exactly is.

"Our efforts in the first phase of AASHA in July last had persons living with HIV (PLH) going around to create awareness. The strategy worked wonders," says APSACS deputy project director K. Padmavathy.

"The public got to know what a person with HIV looks like, that a PLH can look like any normal person. This increased the perception that everyone is at risk, and in turn, the precautionary attitude. They also realised that mingling with PLHs does not result in contracting HIV. Overall, it helped in better understanding of HIV/AIDS," she explains. This time around, Ms. Padmavathy adds, PLHs trained at Hyderabad will pass on the training to mandal-level resource persons, also PLHs, who in turn will go door-to-door.

Awareness drive

At Ramanthapur, 40 PLHs, all members of the Ranga Reddy wing of the city-based Network of HIV Positive People (NHP+) are being trained by APSACS and NHP+. "All of them are NHP+ members and are outreach workers in different NGOs. Apart from creating awareness among the public, they will also counsel other PLHs on positive living," says M.J. Rajasekhar, an office-bearer of NHP+ and a PLH himself.

"Our motto is that though we learn to lead a positive life with the virus, we should be able to tell others also about it, and that prevention is always the best option," he adds.

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