India's northeast vows to renew AIDS fight : India

Guwahati, Dec 1 - India's northeastern states, alarmed by rising AIDS fatalities from drug use in the region, Friday pledged to step up their fight against the deadly virus by spreading awareness.

Schoolchildren, health workers, rehabilitated drug addicts and HIV-positive people wearing red ribbons marched through the streets in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura to mark World AIDS Day.

'There is a need to step up the level of awareness to check the virus and the role and responsibilities of government leaders like us in fighting HIV/AIDS,' Assam Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said here.

'Let us take a pledge to jointly stop the AIDS time-bomb from exploding,' Sarma told IANS.

The minister inaugurated a voluntary counselling and testing camp to help people take advantage of the facility.

'We need many people for voluntary counselling and testing centres if we are to effectively tackle the problem, besides easy availability of anti-retroviral therapies (ART),' said Jahnabi Goswami, president of the Assam Network of Positive People.

Goswami, 30, is one of the few women in India fighting to raise AIDS awareness and one of an even smaller number to have publicly declared that she is HIV-positive.

India accounts for 5.2 million HIV-positive people, second only to South Africa. The northeast - home to 40 million people - has been declared one of the country's high-risk zones, with close to 100,000 people infected with the virus.

Authorities in the northeast fear that the disease may further spread because of the region's acute drug problem.

India's northeast lies on the edge of the heroin producing 'golden triangle' of Laos, Myanmar and Thailand. Independent estimates have put the number of regular intravenous drug users in the region at 300,000.

'The trend is very serious here in the northeast with intravenous drug users passing the infection to others through their sex partners. HIV transmission rates from mother to child are also assuming frightening proportions,' a Manipur health department spokesman said.

Manipur is the worst hit by HIV/AIDS, with over 25,000 people living with the virus. A large number of people living with HIV in the northeast are struggling for survival as hundreds die without access to treatment.

'People are dying regularly and suffering a lot, unable to access ART as such medicines are very expensive,' said Dipak Singh, president of the Manipur Network of Positive People.