India needs to defuse ticking AIDS bomb, sex workers told

CALCUTTA, India (AFP) Feb 25, 2004
India must take swift action against HIV/AIDS by educating its population about the disease in order to prevent infection levels skyrocketing, Indian officials said at a conference Wednesday.

"Unless the problem is addressed on a war-footing in India, the killer disease could become as devastating as in Africa," West Bengal Health Minister Surya Kanta Mishra told the conference.

Speaking at an eight-day conference in West Bengal's Calcutta Mishra said: "HIV and AIDS is not only a health problem, it has a far-reaching impact on the developing economy of India,

The conference has drawn more than 5,000 sex workers from various Indian states and delegates of sex workers' organisations from Bangladesh, Nepal, Thailand, New Zealand and Canada to look at ways of battling the disease.

An estimated 30,000 sex workers are expected to attend over the course of the week.

"AIDS threatens to become a crisis of alarming proportion in India, undermining public health development unless an urgent action plan is adopted to slow the spread of the disease," India's Health Secretary J.V.R. Prasad Rao told an international conference of sex workers.

An Indian government-funded project launched 12 years ago in Sonagachi, housing more than 8,000 sex workers, has successfully slowed the spread of HIV/AIDS, and can serve as an example for similar scheme nationwide, Rao said.

"We must send a message across the country that urgent action, based on the Sonagachi model, is needed to fight HIV and AIDS in India," he told the meeting.

The programme combines free distribution of condoms with an education campaign.

There are more than two million sex workers in India who are highly susceptible to the disease because of reluctance by Indian males to use condoms and ignorance about the disease, experts say.

India officially has around 4.58 million people living with HIV/AIDS, second only to South Africa's five million, and a recent study warned that the figure could skyrocket if urgent action is not taken.

According to the World Health Organisation, 95 percent of the 40 million people infected with the virus live in developing nations.

Some 30 million people have died of AIDS while around 14,000 are infected with HIV each day around the world.

TERRA.WIRE