Thiruvananthapuram: A revolution of sorts is in the making in many grama panchayats in the State as HIV prevention through awareness building and creating attitudinal changes through information dissemination has become activities central to the lives of local communities.

Terminologies like `safe sex', `abstinence' and `monogamous relationships' have become common place in the vocabulary of many community leaders, who have been educating their village to know about HIV but not to get scared by it.

As part of its initiative to take HIV prevention and intervention programmes to the grassroots, Kerala State AIDS Control Society has launched a project in grama panchayats, wherein volunteers from the community will devise and implement programmes on HIV to suit the local community.

The pilot project was launched in 28 selected grama panchayats across the State - two from each district - in January, with the focus on creating community awareness about the prevention of HIV, care and support issues of infected persons and the treatment options available to them. At the first review meeting of the project held here on Thursday, grama panchayat presidents reported that the programme had evoked a positive response from the community.

Target group

The project is targeted at those in the 15 to 45 year age group. Panchayats will first conduct community-level surveys on the attitude about and knowledge of HIV among people, based on the questionnaires prepared by KSACS. The interventions will be built around the survey findings.

"In almost all panchayats, we found that people had a fair idea about HIV and its transmission. But the awareness about HIV-testing, counselling facilities, care and support services and free medical treatment, all provided free of cost by the Government in all districts, were very poor. We also found that despite all information disseminated on HIV, stigma about the disease is very much a reality," a KSACS official said.

The society's focus this year is on two major policy areas, as envisaged under Phase III of the National AIDS Control Programme (NACP), taking HIV prevention and intervention programmes to the grassroots and organising structured programmes for reducing stigma and discrimination of HIV infection.

NACP III is designed to be more decentralised, with district-level programmes to strengthen HIV prevention, control and care activities. The third phase will focus on equipping district-level health care system to meet the challenges posed by HIV infection.

Studies by KSACS have pointed to the fact that interpersonal communication is the most effective method for conveying messages about HIV in a convincing manner. Messages passed on in a community through one-to-one communication works better because every individual is being addressed directly.

Rather than just focussing on HIV, the idea is to develop the sub-centre in every panchayat as family health and counselling centres, where all health issues, including guidance and counselling on adolescent health problems, are taken care of.

The representative from Kuttiyadi panchayat reported how a brigade of health volunteers, who would make house visits on a regular basis and encourage people to come to the sub-centres, had been set up in the panchayat.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail