AIDS awareness gets a boost at district hospital

NOIDA: Prompted by a recent symposium in the district that revealed that only 60% of sex workers in the country are reached with HIV prevention programmes while only 40% identify correct ways of using prevention methods, the BR Ambedkar Multispecialty hospital has stepped up awareness programmes at its Sexually Transmitted Infection clinic. Doctors add that more than 50% of new infections are among those below the age of 30.
The clinic has treated almost 700 patients since it was set up to provide counselling services along with treatment. “In many cases, the patients didn’t know that they were suffering from a disease. In other cases, they didn’t know how to go about the process of getting treatment. Lack of awareness is a major hindrance in the treatment of such diseases,” said Dr Meena Mishra, chief medical superintendent, district hospital.
According to Dr IS Gilada, president of the AIDS Society of India, in spite of 2.5 million HIV infected people in the country, there are less than 100 full time doctors and around 1,000 part time doctors in the private sector specializing in HIV practice. Gilada said, “Half of the infected people do not know their HIV status.”
To combat the disease, the hospital has tied up with an NGO, Mayama Gram Udyog, to ensure that the process of increasing awareness amongst sex workers and kinnars, which are high risk groups for contracting such infections, takes place alongside the treatment of infected patients. “Patients, particularly sex workers and kinnars, don’t realize the seriousness of contracting AIDS and think that they are wasting time which could be spent more valuably earning money,” said Rashmi Singh, STI counsellor, district hospital.
While the awareness programmes in the district hospital has shown that there has been increase in the number of patients coming in for treatment voluntarily, doctors agree that there is still a lot of work to be done. “In July 2011, when the programme was started, only 5 patients came to us. In comparison, January 2012 saw 53 patients. The number of sex workers has steadily been increasing and many patients are coming to us voluntarily. We are especially focusing on rural areas amongst the young population where awareness is low,” said an official.