Staff Reporter
SHILLONG:
On the occasion of World AIDS Day on December 1, the principal secretary Health and Family Welfare department, Sampath Kumar, stressed on the need for more men to come forward for screening.
Speaking as the chief guest at the programme, he said that women do come forward for antenatal checkups (ANC) for which they are being screened where it was found that close to 1 per cent of the pregnant women are being tested with HIV.
As per estimates, there are about 8692 people living with HIV (PLHIV), but out of them, only 4900 know that they have HIV.
In this connection, the principal secretary emphasised on the need to create more awareness and one has to be proactive when it comes to screening.
On the other hand, he said that a large number of pregnant women, which is almost like 10 per cent to 12 per cent of them are teenagers, and the risk of HIV infection runs high.
“It is happening because of a lack of knowledge, many children, many young boys and girls, they don’t know the safe period, so people should know about it. These are all the things that we should know, everybody should know,” Kumar said.
He added that a lot of challenges can be overcome when people speak up and hence the government comes up with a support system.
World AIDS Day was observed under the theme ‘Equalize’. The “Equalize” slogan is a call to action- a prompt for all to work for the proven practical actions needed to address inequalities and help end AIDS.
The event was organized by the office of the Meghalaya AIDS Control, Society, Health and Family Welfare Department, Government of Meghalaya in collaboration with Meghalaya State Legal Services Authority and District Legal Services Authority.
Chief Judicial Magistrate, Assistant District & Sessions Judge and Secretary, District Legal Services Authority, NI Dkhar, MJS, during the function had stressed on the HIV and AIDS (Prevention and Control) ACT, 2017 and made aware the importance of knowing legal rights and tackle HIV related stigma and discrimination.
Project Director, Meghalaya AIDS Control Society, Shillong, Dr. B Decruse, said that Meghalaya is one of the states in India with increasing trend of new HIV infection.
Adult HIV prevalence rate in the state is at 0.42 per cent which is higher than the national average which stands at 0.21 per cent. An estimated number of PLHIV is 8692, out of those 4996 know their status, 3718 are on Antiretroviral Treatment (ART), 2356 are virally suppressed”. She mentioned that HIV and AIDS can be ended if inequalities are addressed and tackled.
As part of the observation, other activities conducted were felicitation of various centers, NGOs, institutes, etc. for their fight against HIV, display of placards with messages prepared by students, performance by various artist and HIV theme song sung by the band LYNX, who are also the brand ambassador of HIV and AIDS programme and the release of video titled “Rangli” produced by S Sun a staff of ART Jowai.