The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : ‘AIDS campaign needs to focus on rural areas’

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Tuesday, Jan 08, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

‘AIDS campaign needs to focus on rural areas’

Special Correspondent

CHENNAI: The HIV/AIDS awareness campaign needs to focus more on the rural population, which accounts for 40 per cent of HIV cases, Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss said here on Monday.

Addressing youth at the launch of a life skills curriculum designed for the Red Ribbon Club at Loyola College, he said the substantial HIV prevalence reported from villages indicated that awareness messages were not reaching rural areas.

One of the innovative interventions of the national campaign was the introduction of the Red Ribbon Express, a seven-bogey train, that would take the core messages across the country.

Flagged off last month, it would more than 27,000 km, covering 180 stations and 50,000 villages.

Substantial funding

Pointing out that funding for the ongoing Phase III of the National AIDS Control Programme was expected to be scaled up to $3 billion over the next five years for prevention, care and support interventions, Dr. Anbumani said the huge sum going into the initiative did not often create the desired impact at the grassroots.

In a country with the largest segment (600 million) of people in the 30-35 age group, the youth, particularly Red Ribbon Club volunteers, had a dynamic role to play in propagating the message of prevention, a feat that even celebrity endorsements used for campaigning struggled to achieve, he said.

According to Dr. Anbumani, another worrying dimension of the HIV/AIDS prevalence in India was that almost 45 per cent of the 2.7 million affected people were women.

Though men and women were equally at risk, it was women who were more vulnerable.

Though the Red Ribbon Clubs focussed on health issues within the perspective of HIV/AIDS, volunteers should incorporate messages about the ills of smoking, alcohol consumption and drug abuse, he said.

State Health Minister M. R. K. Panneerselvam said it was proposed to increase the number of clubs in colleges and schools from 900 to 1,150. They reach out to eight lakh students, with more than 50,000 members.

Michael O. Leavitt, secretary of Health and Human Services, US Department of Health and Human Services, said the curriculum, ‘Celebrating Life’ or ‘C-Life,’ designed for the clubs, contained an important set of instructions that could motivate the people to change in a positive way. However, it was important for youngsters “not to just read it but heed it.”

‘C-Life’ would be rolled out in all higher education institutions this year, said Supriya Sahu, Project Director, Tamil Nadu State AIDS Control Society.

US Consul-General David T. Hopper and Loyola College principal Albert Muthumalai participated.

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