Almost 30% truck drivers are vulnerable to AIDS. Of those who succumb the average age is 24 years

AIDS is assuming terrifying proportions in Delhi. According to Dr Bitra George, coordinator, Model HIV Counselling Centre at Safdurjung Hospital, the disease is affecting thousands in Delhi annually.

“The figures might be low for other groups. But they are alarming in the high risk group, which includes truck drivers, street children, migrant labourers and sex workers,” Dr George says. “From May 1997 to September 1998, 1,350 people visited our counselling centre. And as much as 9.1 per cent of them later tested as HIV positives. “What is scary is that the average age of these people is around 24 years,” he adds. “Worse, we found their awareness level abysmally poor. Sure, they had all heard of ‘AIDS’, but none had any clue about what it was or how it could affect them,” he said.

Are government-sponsored awareness programmes not working? Dr George thinks their success has been limited. “At least, people know that AIDS exists. But to find out more about the disease, they have to seek out counselling centres like ours,” he said, “and sadly, there aren’t too many of these.” Rajesh Kumar, executive director of the Society for the Promotion of Youth and Masses, a voluntary organisation working with HIV-positive and STD patients, says some 25-30 per cent of truck drivers passing through Delhi have STDs and are extremely vulnerable to AIDS. STDs increase the risk of contracting AIDS by 10 times.

“We can’t give figures since we stopped screening individuals for AIDS in 1993, when we discovered that HIV-positive patients were being ostracised severely,” Kumar says, “one of our patients was driven to suicide recently.” Setting up dependable blood banks, distributing good quality condoms at health centres, making HIV testing kits more accessible, and planned campaigns are important steps in controlling the scourge before it controls us, suggest Dr George and Kumar.

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