|
India fails the Aids
test
By Nadine Oberhuber
December 1, 2000
New Delhi - On the eve of World Aids Day December 1, the Indian government has claimed that the spread of HIV has been arrested in the country, but many refuse to believe this.
"The rate of spread of HIV/Aids is not so fast as previously projected and there is evidence that it has reached a plateau," says Health Minister C Thakur.
However, he could not support his claim with statistics. Thakur said the government's National Aids Control Organization (Naco) was putting together the findings of a survey, but it will not be available for at least another month. The minister also admitted questions were being asked in India whether HIV actually causes Aids. But Thakur says the government does not accept the view held by some that there is no link between HIV and Aids.
For once, the government did not find itself directly challenged by the joint UN anti-Aids program, UNAids, which for years has been saying that HIV is spreading rapidly in India. In its "Aids Epidemic Update" released Tuesday, UNAids projected that 5.8 million people could be living with HIV in South and Southeast Asia and 780,000 could die of Aids by December. But the document did not give separate figures for India.
In July, a UNAids study estimated there were more than 300,000 Aids-related deaths in India last year alone and that more than 4 million Indians were HIV positive. The Indian government then protested loudly, challenging the reliability of the UNAids statistics. According to latest Naco figures, 0.7 percent of the adult population of the country, or 3.7 million people, are HIV positive. Nearly 90 percent of these people are between 18 and 40 years old. Half of the new HIV cases are being reported among people below the age of 25 years.
But public health activists in India are also questioning the government's figures and allege that these are being manipulated to satisfy multilateral donors. They point out that Naco is still to complete a 65-city HIV/Aids survey begun six years ago. Studies have been completed in just 16 cities. They also question Naco figures published earlier this year, which show that India's northeastern border state of Manipur now has the lowest HIV prevalence in the country. For years Manipur, which borders Burma, was shown by Naco to have the highest HIV/Aids prevalence, attributed to the large number of injecting drug users among its youth.
Public health activists also express the fear that preoccupation with well-funded Aids/HIV progams has led to the neglect of far more serious public health problems in a country where basic health services are badly in need of improvement. Rights activists are also unhappy with Naco's strategy that is "stigmatizing" sections of the population and creating an Aids scare in the country.
The second phase of the Naco progam, funded by the World Bank among others, began a year ago. A third of the US$229 million to be spent under the progam will be used for "targeted interventions for high risk groups". But last week, five leading non-governmental organizations accused Naco's progams targeted at high risk groups as a violation of human rights. "These progams result in the stigmatization of so-called high risk groups and open them up to discrimination even though there is little scientific data or statistical evidence to show their actual status," says Purushottaman Mulloli of Joint Action Council Kannur.
Those labeled high risk include truck drivers, sex workers, street children, homosexuals and indigenous people. By labeling them thus and subjecting them to "unscientific" programs, Naco is violating their human rights, he says.
Instead of educational programs for people supposed to have high risk behavior, the government ''should create mass awareness against Aids'', says Manoj Pandey of Himalaya Seva Sangh.
The government's National Family Health Survey, published in mid-November, found low general awareness of Aids/HIV among Indians. Only four out of every 10 women in the reproductive age had even heard about it, the survey found.
Critics say that this shows that Naco's decade-old Aids awareness campaigns have not had much impact. What is worse, says A Arun of Azadi Bachao Andolan, is that by focusing on HIV/Aids the government is "denying attention to much more serious problems in a country where 50 percent of deaths are attributable to malnutrition".
Copyright 1999-2004, AsianSexGazette.com. All rights reserved. No
content may be reproduced in whole or part without written permission.
Please contact us via the link below for re-print and syndication policies.
|
|
AIDS
infecting South Asia Fast, 90% incidence in
India
6-12-2004 |
