In India, Sex Trade Fuels HIV's Spread

In male-dominated Indian society, women have little voice over their sexual or reproductive lives. About half of India's new HIV infections occur in women, 90 percent of whom were virgins before -- and monogamous after -- getting married. So many married men are transmitting HIV to their wives that married women are one of India's highest-risk groups. Men who pay for sex, men who have sex with other men, and sexually active men who share infected needles are fueling India's HIV epidemic.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government is more aggressive in India's fight against AIDS than the government preceding him, which had opposed promoting condoms and had downplayed India's epidemic. The current government nearly doubled the AIDS budget, from $31 million in 1999 to $57 million in 2005.

Singh has personally demanded that every government ministry prepare three-year HIV prevention plans, said S.Y. Quraishi, director of India's National AIDS Control Organization. Over the next six months, four trains outfitted as clinics and HIV counseling/testing centers will visit 40,000 villages in NACO's' "Red Ribbon Express" campaign. On mobile stages, entertainers will do guerilla theater with an AIDS message.

This summer, the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation will help train 1 million Indian doctors in HIV basics and extend the reach of free treatment from one patient in every 1,250 to one patient in 50 by the year's end. The number of treatment centers will grow from six to 25 this year.

With Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation support, the Avahan ("call to action") India AIDS Initiative, which promotes HIV prevention to sex workers and their clients, is attempting to establish 50 clinics in high-risk areas.

Back to other news for March 4, 2005