Gates releases $ 67.5 m to fight AIDS in India

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on Monday announced the release of its first grant worth $67.5 million for AIDS prevention in India.Th...

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on Monday announced the release of its first grant worth $67.5 million for AIDS prevention in India.

The Foundation also announced a commitment of another $100 million to the $100 million promised earlier. The first grant is for a period of five years and aims to reduce the prevalence in high-risk groups and stabilise it in the general population by 2008. The Foundation has promised to release the remaining amount in six to nine months.

This was announced after the first board meeting of the Foundation’s India AIDS Initiative. Naming the initiative Avahan or ‘call for action,’ the Foundation has identified two initiatives as part of its programme. The first programme ‘The District Focus State Impact initiative’ will support HIV prevention programme in six states: Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharasthra, Manipur and Nagaland. The programme will focus on sex workers, clients and intravenous drug users. ‘‘The target population will include 0.3 million commercial sex workers, 4.5 million clients and 60,000 injecting migrant workers,’’ said Ashok Alexander, director, India AIDS Initiative.

The Second programme, ‘National Highway Program’, aims at reducing transmission among truckers along national highways. The intervention will be implemented along 7,000 km of the major highways in India (NH1-9, North-South and East-West Corridors). The target locations will include 50 to 70 major halt points.

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