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| India's 5.7 million people with HIV virus | | Govt. for monitoring HIV status among security forces | | From B L KAK
NEW DELHI, July 8: India's two most vital establishments--Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and Ministry of Defence (MoD)--have been confronted with a serious problem. The problem arises from the detection of several members of Armed Forces and paramilitary forces afflicted by AIDS, or HIV.
Both MHA and MoD have issued fresh instructions, separately though, calling for potent plan to ward off the spreading AIDS or HIV in the Armed Forces and paramilitary personnel. Recently, a set of reports from parts of the country's northeast region triggered fears in power corridors, simply because it was rumoured that behind-the-scene work had been initiated to spread AIDS and HIV in the Armed Forces.
A careful scrutiny at the behest of the Ministry of Defence led to the official statement ruling out any foreign hand or conspiracy to spread the dreaded diseases among the members of the three Services--Army, Air Force and Navy. The statement has aserted that there is not medical evidence to support the talk or suspicion of a foreign conspiracy to spread AIDS among Indian Army personel.
According to the Defence Minister, Pranab Mukherjee, medical services of the Armed Forces have a "vibrant" HIV (human immuno-deficiency virus) and AIDS (acquired imuno deficiency syndrome) control programme. And the status of HIV and AIDS in the Armed Forces is being closely monitored. Monitoring mechanism has been put in place after a number of soldiers in diferent parts of the country were found afflicted by HIV or AIDS. For obvious reasons the Defence Ministry does not want to make public exact number of the affected defence personel.
The Home Ministry has reckoned the fact that Central police forces can be prone to what is officially described as 'special risk' from HIV and AIDS. EARLY TIMES was officially told that the Ministry of Home Affairs had prepared an action plan which envisages creation of awareness, prevention strategy, testing facilites at force hospitals, follow-up procedure and training of medical and paramedical staff in handling HIV and AIDS cases.
Yet another circular from the MHA specifically calls for an efective and result-oriented monitoring of the status of HIV and AIDS in AssamRifles (AR), Border Security Force (BSF), Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), Shastra Seema Bal (SSB), National Security Guard (NSG), Special Protection Group (SPG), Civil Defence and Delhi Police.
According to the statistics available with the Home Ministry, the CRPF personnel accounted for a maximum number of deaths due to HIV and AIDS between 2002 and 2005. The figure stood at 86--19 in 2002, 26 in 2003, 26 in 2004 and 15 in 2005.
The CRPF was followed by the Assam Rifles, which accounted for 39 death dure to HIV or AIDS during the period. SSB is the only organisation, which did not suffer any HIV or AIDS fatal casualty during the 2002-2005 period.
As against this, BSF reported 15 deaths among its personel. The figure of death due to the dreaded disease was 26 in the case of CISF. The lowest number of deaths due to HIV and AIDS (just five) was reported from the ITBP during the 2002-05 period.
Prostitutes in southern India, on the other hand, are being given discount shopping cards in return for having regular checks at a sexual health clinic as part of a project to raise HIV/AIDS awareness. UNAIDS, the United Nation’s AIDS-prevention agency, recently said that India has the highest HIV caseload in the world, with an estimated 5.7 million people living with the virus.
“They were very particular about us including a sari shop. Presentation is very important for them,” Sushena Reza-Paul of the Karnataka Health Promotion Trust has been quoted as saying. Shops and restaurants in the city of Mysore were at first hesitant about being associated with the sex workers’ project, but eventually relented after being convinced that 500 card-carrying sex workers would lead to a steady stream of paying customers.
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