Voices

1. “With NACP III, India has a chance to deliver a decisive blow to the ever-spreading HIV/AIDS epidemic. If the program is well-funded and well implemented, it will achieve high coverage of preventive interventions amongst groups with high risk behaviour such as commercial sex workers, men having sex with men and injecting drug users. In this way, India can stop the epidemic at its core. From now onwards, it will be critical for society to reach out to these groups to help them fight the epidemic amongst themselves”: Kees Kostermans, World Bank Lead Public Health Specialist, South Asia Region.

2. “We are now confident of overcoming the epidemic as the strategies formulated for prevention have proved to be effective”: Sujatha Rao, Director-General of NACO.

3. “Treating people is expensive and the only way it (HIV control) can be financially sustainable is if there is more focus on prevention. What is clear is that all tools necessary for prevention are there and if implemented right will yield great results”: Denis Broun, Country Coordinator, UNAIDS.

4. “While it is a good sign that the virus has not spread beyond one per cent up to 2005, there are many imponderables in the years ahead. Greater mobility, larger disposable incomes, migration on the one hand, and stressors that may force people into sex work for earning a livelihood on the other will increase the vulnerability of the Indian population. We should not lose sight of that. There is a real danger of more people getting infected, and so, our primary focus has to be in the sphere of prevention”: Suneeta Singh, World Bank Senior Public Health Specialist and project co-task team leader.

5. “We are very happy with the design of the new NACP III. It is ambitious as its scope and scale has greatly expanded”: Ashok Alexander, Director, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

6. “While it is a much more harmonized program where other organizations are trying to fund in line with what’s there in NACP III, this harmonization has to be brought to reality while implementing the program. That’s the challenge. At the central level the coordination is better than at the state level. But ultimately it is the states that have to implement the program”: Silke Seco, Health Adviser, DFID (DFID is also pooling funds for NACP III along with the World Bank)

7. “We now need to have a district approach. We have developed a concept of link worker – a person who will cover 1000 population or more and will be specifically involved with working on HIV prevention at the village level. We will also involve different departments of the government, as well as the private sector and leverage their manpower, their schemes and structures to reach out to a cross section of people. Public-private partnerships and involvement of NGOs will also increase”: Suresh Kumar Director (Finance), NACO.

8. “The weak link of the program is the inability to look at prevention with care. Just to look at care in a medical framework is no good. People do not get adequate nutrition to take the medicine. Also the issue of stigma is very huge”: Anjali Gopalan, Director, Naz Foundation.

9. “The biggest problem of the AIDS program is that the focus is on targeted interventions which are often on shaky ground in law. For example, there is a targeted intervention for men having sex with men, and then there is a law that criminalizes sexuality”: Anjali Gopalan, Director, Naz Foundation.

10. “I can proudly say that by declaring my status, I am limiting this virus within myself, and helping prevent the virus from spreading. A lot of preventive work can be done if all HIV positive people come out in the open”: Manoj Pardesi, an HIV positive person.