New Delhi, December 03: HIV/AIDS, an epidemic is swiftly spreading its redundant deadly wings in many parts of the country, engulfing many innocent young men and women in its fold.
For a country like India where discussing sex is considered as immoral curbing, its proliferation is a daunting task.
Although government of India in collaboration with other stake holders has taken many appreciative and stringent steps to check the man made menace but the stigma is continuing to spurt but recede. National Aids Control Organisation (NACO) a national level government run and monitored organisation came into existence in the year 1991, to work exclusively in the niche of HIV/AIDS. However, although its role can’t be sidelined but still it has failed to achieve what it should have been in its 15 years of emergence. Time is ripe to introspect what went wrong, even after incurring millions of rupees? Why HIV/AIDS victims are discriminated persistently in society, be it in school or hospital? Why the host of HIV/AIDS growing and not receding?
Electronic and print media has been doing yeoman service in spreading awareness about HIV/AIDS among the masses but things have not taken sweeping change. Still we regularly read stories in newspapers and magazines concerning discrimination of HIV/AIDS victims, news channels have also shown reports on such issues. When will our society learn to lend helping hand to HIV/AIDS victims?
Researches on the critical issue have proved time and again that the HIV/AIDS infection/disease doesn’t proliferate through friendship, walking together, shaking hand, working in a same company or sitting together on a dining table. However, it is the stigma attached to the disease that needs to be altered, how long we will bar HIV/AIDS victims in leading normal life? Love, a four letter word has magical power, it transcends culture, boundaries and oceans, why can’t we shower love on HIV/AIDS victims? Let’s believe in deeds, let’s show resolve in eradicating the menace of HIV/AIDS through awareness. A little love for HIV/AIDS will not empty your coffer rather it will serve as a new ray of hope for people living with AIDS.
Till date whatever research has been done on this dreaded disease HIV/AIDS, it proves it proliferates only through:
Having sexual intercourse with someone infected with HIV/AIDS without condom.
HIV/AIDS infected blood transfusion.
HIV/AIDS infected mother to her baby (during pregnancy, during the birth or through breast feeding, according to research only one in three babies born to HIV/AIDS mothers acquire HIV).
Using HIV/AIDS infected syringe.
Let us combat the disease and not the victim and express our love and sympathy not through lip service but through deeds.
–Agenices