Kumaraswamy to stay overnight with HIV affected family

Demonstrating a political commitment to dispel the stigma surrounding persons sufferring from HIV/AIDS, Karnataka Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy has vowed to stay overnight with a HIV positive family in a village in north Karnataka’s Bagalkot district.

“I will spend a night in the house of a family afflicted with HIV during my visit to Bagalkot on January 23. This way I would like to contribute against the stigma and discrimination faced by HIV positive persons”, he said at a function organized in Bangalore to launch the Samastha Project, a comprehensive HIV prevention and care programme.

Claiming that his Government recognizes the challenges posed by the scourge of AIDS, Kumaraswamy said “We are not only fighting the HIV epidemic, but also the social stigma and untouchability attached to it. Our efforts should be aimed at collectively overcoming this pandemic”, the Chief Minister said.

Kumaraswamy said the scourge of AIDS in Karnataka was threatening to undercut some commendable performance in other development indices and export economy.

During the last three months, Kumaraswamy has been staying overnight at modest houses belonging to poor farmers and Dalits during his visits to rural parts of the State. He received a round of applause from the gathering at the function when he announced that his next village sojourn would be with a HIV positive family in Bagalkot.

The Samastha Project is a $ 22 million scheme sponsored by United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for enhanced intervention in prevention of HIV/AIDS in rural areas of Karnataka.

At the launch of the Samastha Project, Mission Director of USAID George Deikum said several districts in north Karnataka had a high-prevalence of HIV/AIDS at almost 2.5 per cent of the total population. He pointed out that Karnataka was the only state with rural prevalence of HIV/AIDS exceeding that of urban areas.

Availability of condoms and the stigma attached to them remain key challenges in rural Karnataka. As condoms are not widely used for family planning, efforts to maintain free supplies through fair price shops and anganwadis have met with resistance earlier. Increasing the acceptance of condoms for high risk-encounters and targeting behaviour change and communication are among the issues envisaged in Samastha Project.