Fought HIV well but haven’t won yet: Gates initiative head

New Delhi: In the eight years since the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation launched an HIV prevention initiative in India under its Global Health Program, the country has changed the way it looks at the disease, better checks are in place, and the scare itself has subsided, with 2007 estimates halving the number of infected people to between 2.5 and 3.1 million.

 

The numbers may be encouraging but “it’s way too early to declare a victory”, says Ashok Alexander, director of Avahan, the initiative to reduce the spread of HIV in India. The virus is powerful and capable of coming back, he warns, a signal to the government which is in the process of taking over the various programmes under Avahan.

 
Launched in 2003, Avahan is now in the process of transferring its programmes. “Around 30 per cent” of these have already been “transferred”, with the remaining 70 per cent to follow by next year. The Gates Foundation will focus on other diseases of concern, such as polio and maternal and child healthcare.
Alexander is hoping the government will continue the techniques Avahan had used to mobilise communities, such as helping sex workers set up beauty salons, pushing the use of contraceptives, and introducing paan-flavoured condoms.
 
He says it took an effort at the beginning. “Back in 2003, there was a feeling that the virus would grow and the epidemic would go haywire. We talked to experts but they said we were crazy. There was a lot of denial; funding was on a limited scale and there was little focus on prevention. HIV didn’t figure in the list of priorities of sex workers when we asked them.”
 
The foundation conveyed its message better in the next two years. He says HIV incidence has declined in all major states, condom usage gone up and sexually transmitted infections gone down.
Avahan has provided funding and support to targeted HIV prevention programmes in the six states with the highest prevalence, and along the nation’s major trucking routes. The target groups are those most vulnerable, including sex workers, their clients and partners, high-risk men who have sex with men, and injecting drug users.

In July 2009, the foundation had announced that it had increased its total commitment to Avahan from $258 million to $338 million. Alexander says the foundation’s AIDS initiative was designed on the lines of a build-operate-transfer model.

As reported in: http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/Fought-HIV-well-but-haven-t-won-yet--Gates-initiative-head/826271/