Fight against AIDS

''India Forum'' of the Centre for Policy Management and the Institute for Integrated Learning in Management (IILM) organised a symposium on November 26 at the India Habitat Centre. The topic for the symposium was "Women''s empowerment essential for success against HIV/AIDS".
A leading political figure and a former BBC journalist, Baroness Margaret, was the keynote speaker for the afternoon.The delegation from UK that participated in the event included prominent NRI''s like deputy leader of the House of Lords, Lord Dholakia, Baroness Shirley Williams and others. Dr L M Singhvi, director general of National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) Dr S Y Quraishi, director of Gates Foundation, India, Ashok Alexander, Dr Abhishekh Singhvi and Nafisa Ali among others attended the talk. Dr Abid Hussain chaired the session.
The Baroness spoke about the relevance of the symposium in the wake of the World AIDS Day on December 1 and appreciated the organisers effort for focusing the attention on a more basic, sociological and economic dimension to a problem usually regarded as a health problem.
UNAIDS has dedicated this year''s AIDS Day to "Women and the Virus". According to a World Health Organisation (WHO) study after Africa, it will be the East and South Asian countries which are going to face this epidemic in pandemic proportions. The Baroness spoke about the role of women in an anthropological-approach towards solving the problem. She said that women are innocent victims, especially in the Indian rural societies where less than 30 per cent of them know about sexually-transmitted diseases and only about 21 per cent are aware of HIV infection. She spoke of initiatives like the Raj Loomba Foundation and the Katha Project along with the Gates Foundation, which have been doing extraordinary work in this field.
She remarked that in a country which had been marked by the IT boom and where kiosks were being set up in rural areas in an effort to educate the masses, an integrated approach should be followed. These kiosks should be used as centres for knowledge and a means to spread awareness about the infection. A social approach, rather than a confrontational one should be followed at the planning level, especially while targeting the youth.
Dr S Y Quraishi, DG, National AIDS Control Organisation spoke about the Indian AIDS scene and said that in the last 18 years, over 5.1 million people in the country have been infected. The numbers are ever rising and the nature of the spread of the infection has changed. It has moved from high-risk groups (homosexuals, truck drivers) to general population.