Rs 7-cr ad blitzkrieg to fight AIDS

The Government is also planning to install condom-vending machines on an all-India basis to encourage the use of the contraceptive. A technical evaluation of the various vending machines has been planned and they will be put in place within a year.

“I am not happy with the current AIDS programme — it has had very little impact so far,” says Health Minister Salim Shervani. “We have to take drastic measures for a drastic disease. There is no cure for AIDS; awareness and prevention are the only ways to contain it.”

Shervani, who “wants dramatic things to happen”, is keen that more emphasis should be laid on high-risk groups (truck drivers, sex workers and drug users). Talks are on with the transport industry to see that every truck driver carries two packets of condoms in the glove compartment of his truck.

However, while acknowledging the magnitude of the problem, the Health Ministry feels that the statistics given by the World Health Organisation (WHO) — three to five million HIV cases in India — are exaggerated.

“The WHO could not satisfy me on the basis of its calculation,” Shervani says. He points out that the organisation has arrived at its figure on the assumption that truck drivers drive through a certain number of villages, and has simply multiplied the number of drivers with the number of women.