A.P. State Aids Control Society State Program Manager Dr U. Rama Krishna has said that the Red Ribbon Express-III, which is a mega HIV/AIDS awareness campaign, would enter the State on May 31 at Dharmavaram in Anantapur district.
Speaking to media persons here on Tuesday, Rama Krishna said that it was a very important event which was a pet event for the UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh and Minister for Health Medical and Family Welfare Gulam Nabi Azad. The first campaign had a predominant HIV/AIDS focus and second campaign on HIV/AIDS along with the National Rural Health Mission focus. The third round has focus on HIV/ AIDS, NHRM and an add-on with youth in particular.
The APSACS Additional Project Director, B. Jayamma said that there was a half coach devoted to youth-related aspects. Symbolically also this year, it was started on the birthday of Swamy Vivekananda, the National Youth Day on January 12, 2012. The train has six coaches to spread awareness on HIV/AIDS.
It is a yearlong event and the train goes through 23 States and Union Territories and 162 districts in the country. It will be in Andhra Pradesh from May 31 to June 17. Out of all the 23 districts, there were eight districts, which were selected. The focused groups, apart from the youth, are the health care providers, police, panchayat women and also government officials.
The mission is to create awareness among the people in large. There are exhibition coaches with awareness games on touch screens, short videos creating awareness in Telugu on general health programmes and youth. There are shot audio messages for the parents, youth, women groups, teachers, panchayat leaders and media personnel spoken by their representatives in Telugu.
There is an IEC van, which roams around 25 to 100km radius from the halt station and spreads the messages in folk and media activities. The messages are on methods to prevent HIV and most of the messages on the train are also mentioned in the IEC van.
The train will halt from May 31 and June 1 at Dharmavaram, from June 2 to 3 at Gunthakal, from June 4 to 5 at Secunderabad, from June 6 to 7 at Adilabad, from June 8 to 9 at Kazipet, from June 10 to 11 at Mahbubnagar, from June 12 to 13 at Nalgonda, from June 14 to 15 at Guntur, from June 16 to 17 at Visakhapatnam. (NSS)