With the detection of the first HIV infection case in the country in 1986, the National AIDS Committee was constituted in the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare the following year. Various steps were taken up to address HIV and AIDS on a national level with India`™s first National AIDS Control Program (NACP) being launched in 1992 and the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) set up to implement the program. The objective of NACP-I (1992-1999) was to control the spread of HIV infection. The main component of the program at this stage was prevention, another major step taken up was the initiation of the HIV sentinel surveillance system. Following this first phase, the second NACP (1999-2006) was focused on intervention programs with measures being taken up for what was known as targeted interventions for high risk groups of sex workers, men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, truckers and migrants. This second phase included the earlier program components but also put in new elements of behavior change communication, setting up voluntary counseling and testing facilities etc. Free anti-retroviral therapy was initiated in selected Government hospitals across the country while equal importance was given on developing policies to aid the work on the ground.
With the NACP third phase, the focus is on integration and mainstreaming where HIV and AIDS programs and services are to be owned by community based bodies and Government machineries taking the lead. This phase is where all the work covered under the earlier two phases are being tested as Government machineries in the country, have never been known to have functioned effectively, qualitatively and with transparency. Of course, a generalization would be far off the mark for there are states where Government Departments have taken the lead in mainstreaming HIV and AIDS programs. An example of this is Tamil Nadu where even before the third phase of NACP began, the state Transport Department ensured that people who were traveling to ART centers to get medicines were exempted from paying their fares. It was also in this state that people living with HIV and AIDS were given the benefit of various social welfare schemes.
The first HIV positive case in Manipur was reported in February 1990 from the blood samples of October 1989 among a cluster of Injecting Drug Users (IDUs). The state began strong with a State AIDS Policy being adopted in 1996, becoming the first state to do so. The range of programs and best practices taken up in the state have in fact been replicated in other parts of the country but these were mainly the initiatives of the non government sector and specifically those taken up by affected communities. They have not only taken the lead with regard to initiatives on the ground but have also been the ones who have been most vocal when it comes to loopholes in the HIV and AIDS programs and policies being implemented by the state government. Hence it comes as no surprise that such a body, the Community Network for Empowerment (CoNE) along with another body called the MACS Partner NGOs Forum (MPNF) has stepped in to make a poignant plea to the state authorities not to keep shuffling officials in charge of the state AIDS control program. Their positioning is that Government officials take time to be sensitized about HIV and AIDS and the communities affected by it, and that constant shuffling affects the pace of work on the ground. The Government has its ways of functioning but that does not mean that it shies away from ensuring that officials aware and sensitized about HIV and AIDS are the ones who lead programs.
Leader Writer: Chitra Ahanthem