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AIDS fund up five-fold, but HIV-infected get raw deal
Published on Mon, Jul 16, 2007 at 22:45, Updated on Tue, Jul 17, 2007 at 19:56 in India section
Tags: AIDS Control Programme, India , New Delhi
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New Delhi: Shakil's parents threw him out of his house three years ago. Dev has had three doctors refusing him basic treatment. Both are living with HIV for years now.
The Government of India has upped funding to its AIDS control programme five fold to Rs 11,000 crore this year. But the government plans to spend most of this money on prevention measures and seems to have turned its back on those who are already living with the virus?
"There is so much money coming in. If it could be used properly, then all those who are infected could be looked after well," says Shakil.
Shakil and Dev are currently on the first line of anti-AIDS treatment that they get free of cost at government hospitals. But they dread the time they'll have to switch over to the next level of treatment, which they will have to buy on their own. It costs about Rs 10,000 a month.
More than 75 per cent of the AIDS fund will be used on prevention measures — like safer blood policy and better marketing for condoms. But the exact spending on the care and treatment for those who have already contracted the disease is unclear.
"We have done nothing for a better blood policy and we are doing nothing for the children who are living with HIV or are orphans," Anjali Gopalan of Naz Foundation points out.
There are about 2.5 million people living with HIV in India. The government is now focusing on high-risk groups like sex workers, truck drivers and injecting drug users. The plan is to stop the disease at the base level so that it doesn't spread to the general population.
When a CNN-IBN team visited an AIDS intervention project for truckers in Delhi, where thousands of rupees is being spent, it was found that the authorities are using innovative ways to spread the message. But, unfortunately, most truckers don't even know the clinic exists.
"No, I don't even know it exists," a trucker in the area told CNN-IBN when asked if he was aware of the clinic.
The clinic spreads the AIDS message discretely without any mention of the word 'HIV’. It is a 'taboo' here and the mention of the word turns off truckers. The clinic instead asks truck drivers to be careful of sexually transmitted diseases. Condoms aren't distributed free here, they need to be bought. Neither does the clinic test anyone for HIV.
About one-third of India’s AIDS programme is funded by foreign agencies. But activists argue that the money is used to fund only a few favoured projects that don't really focus on care and treatment.
"All the money is being used for prevention, prevention and more prevention. Nothing is coming to people who already have HIV/AIDS," Loon Gangte of Delhi Network of Positive People points out
Ramesh Venkataraman of ActionAid says: "Corporatisation of the epidemic is a hallmark of the way the AIDS policy is run in this country. It's being run by corporates and that is expected to make it work."
Funding agencies, however, say prevention is where the money needs to be spent. "Most of our money is being used for high-risk groups and we are focusing on prevention, because that is where the fire is raging," Ashok Alexander of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation claims.
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