The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Toll-free helpline for people with HIV/AIDS

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Friday, Nov 28, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Toll-free helpline for people with HIV/AIDS

Ramya Kannan

CHENNAI: A toll-free helpline—18004191800—for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHA) to be run, for the first time, as a call centre operation, will be inaugurated in Tamil Nadu to commemorate the World AIDS Day. The line will be activated on Saturday.

The AIDS Prevention and Control Project (APAC) will partner Tata Business Support Services and Tata Teleservices to introduce the helpline for providing education, counselling and information on the availability of services to PLHA. The service will be provided by all telecom operators. The call centre, to be located in Hyderabad, will be manned by trained counsellors who can respond in Tamil, English, Hindi and Telugu.

To be called Hello+, the initiative is an attempt at increasing the access to health education and counselling to persons with HIV. “Launched as a public-private-partnership initiative in line with the National AIDS Control Policy-3 to involve the private sector to promote sustainability, Hello+ will be the first such helpline to be operated just as a professional call centre,” Bimal Charles, project director, APAC, told The Hindu.

The lines will be open from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. throughout the week. The staff members who respond to queries from callers have been trained in providing basic counselling services and have been armed with an exhaustive list of all the services being provided in the State. Ensuring confidentiality of the callers is essential.

That includes a map of all Integrated Counselling and Testing Centres, and centres that supply anti-retroviral drugs. “One of the reasons why it could be launched only in Tamil Nadu initially is the availability of such information. If the callers ask for a testing centre close to them or for information about an ART centre, the counsellors will have to be in a position provide it without delay. At this point of time, we can do it conveniently for Tamil Nadu,” he said. It will serve as a model and will be extended, in phases, to other parts of the country.

Hello+ will also serve as a forum where any human rights issue faced by PLHA can be raised. The counsellors will refer these rights-based queries to the authorities concerned and will follow up on any action taken. They will also be required to provide the callers periodically with status updates. If there are queries with respect to medical or legal issues, or other questions that call centre employees are not equipped to handle, they will be routed to experts identified in Tamil Nadu and counsellors who have experience in the field. Dr. Charles said the Tata group was absorbing the development (software) costs and would subsidise the operational and employment costs.

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