Project to treat HIV+ drug addicts in NE soon
Source: The Sangai Express / TNN

New Delhi, February 05 2016 : To tackle the rising HIV prevalence in North Eastern States, especially among people injecting drugs, the Government is set to launch a new initiative called 'Project Sunrise'.

The project is aimed to diagnose 90% of such drug addicts with HIV and put them under treatment by 2020 .

The project is expected to kick-start from this month itself, an official source said.

North Eastern States like Manipur, Mizoram and Nagaland account for highest adult (15-49 years) HIV prevalence in the country, latest Government data showed.

Estimates of 2015 show Manipur tops the list with adult HIV prevalence of 1.15%, followed by Mizoram (0.80%), Nagaland (0.78%), Andhra Pradesh & Telangana (0.66%), Karnataka (0.45%), Gujarat (0.42%) and Goa (0.40%).The National average for adult HIV prevalence is estimated at 0.26% in 2015 .

Besides these States, Maharashtra, Chandigarh, Tripura and Tamil Nadu have also shown estimated adult HIV prevalence greater than the national prevalence.

(Source : NACO) .

However, the Government is particularly concerned about the North Eastern States because it feels the adult HIV prevalence rate in these States is driven by drug injecting people.

"The HIV epidemic in the North Eastern (NE) region is primarily driven by injecting drug use and this is compounded by unsafe sexual behaviours.

The porous international borders, hilly terrain, poor road and transport communications, disturbed law and order situations pose many challenges for NE States in scaling up HIV prevention, care and treatment efforts among key populations and the general population.

This has adversely affected the scale and quality of services," an official note on Project Sunrise said.

According to the note, the National average for prevalence of HIV among drug addicts is 7.14%, whereas in Manipur it is 12.9% and in Mizoram it is 12% .

The Project Sunrise, steered by National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) under the Health Ministry, will also aim to create more awareness about the disease in these NE States.

The project will be funded under the Centre for Disease Control and will be implemented in coordination with state AIDS control organisations and non-government organisations (NGOs) working in this area.

The Government also plans to employ consultants privy to local settings in these States who can help improve the outreach of various initiatives planned under the project.

"The Sunrise Project will be implementing a data-driven approach that will strategically focus on geographic areas and populations to ensure that we are doing the right things, in the right places, at the right time to achieve epidemic control among people who inject drugs," an official said.

Other initiatives planned under the Project include enhancing capacity of State-level institutions in high burden areas, community mobilization, intervention among females injecting drugs and spouses of such people.

The Government also plans to establish a real-time data capturing and program monitoring software solution side by side.

This would automate flow of information in near real time at site, district, State and National level, enabling the Centre to timely review the developments and take required action to fill in the gaps.

Latest estimates by NACO estimates around 21.17 lakhs people living with HIV in India in 2015.Of this 6.54% were children below 15 years of age.

Comment