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Bhubaneswar, Nov 30: While innovative AIDS awareness campaigns such as photo exhibitions, bus tickets carrying figurative messages and solidarity walks on World AIDS Day (which falls Monday) might be giving out the right message, statistics suggest there is yet a long way to go before these campaigns translate into any positive impact at the ground-level.
Contributing to a whopping nine per cent of new HIV infections in the country, the state has 33,515 HIV+ people till October 2014, according to Orissa State AIDS Control Society (OSACS) data. Of these, 20,711 are men while the rest 12,804 are women.
Not surprisingly, 88 per cent of the victims, accounting to 27851, fall in the category of the most productive age group between 15 and 49, while seven per cent (2,208) are aged below 14 years. The other five per cent are people aged above 50.
Ganjam district tops the list of most HIV victims living in the state with 12,017 people: 35.9 per cent of the total HIV infected persons. Cuttack comes in second with 13.2 per cent victims, followed by Koraput with 5.1 per cent, Sambalpur with 5.1 and Khurda at number four with 4.7 per cent of all HIV infected people living in 30 districts.
The state, so far, has recorded 1,428 deaths due to AIDS that include 518 deaths in Ganjam district, accounting for 35 per cent of total deaths due to AIDS in the state. Koraput is another district where 149 deaths due to AIDS have been recorded at 10.4 per cent. In Khurda, so far, 49 deaths due to AIDS have been registered.
Sexual transmission of the virus is the cause in 87 per cent of the total HIV cases registered. This is followed by seven per cent infections to babies who contracted HIV from their mothers while two per cent was due to infected syringes and needles.
While the state authority says the state has low prevalence of HIV victims, some of the women living with HIV told Orissa POST the number of registered women victims might be far higher, as not enough victims come forward due to social stigma surrounding the disease. Compared to 18,125 males contracting HIV through sexual transmission, there are 9,529 women who received the virus through sexual intercourse.
“We have been able to bring down the number of HIV positive victims from 2.93 per cent to 1.26 per cent of the total counseled people since 2009 through various activities such as awareness campaigns through red ribbon train, cultural troupes, more ART and heath centres and so on,” said Tripati Mishra, OSACS joint director. On being asked why there are still a large number of people affected with HIV, Mishra said considering the four crore population of the state, 33,515 victims are not a big number.
According to the joint director, there are around 13,000 ART centres in the state and 12 special groups engaged in raising awareness among 14,000 sex workers in the state.
