APSACS project director S. Aruna Kumari addressing a state-level meeting on Mainstreaming and Partnership on HIV/AIDS in Vijayawada on Friday. Additional Project Director P Rajendra Prasad is seen. | Photo Credit: HAND OUT more-in Police “raids” and “harassment” are scaring away sex workers from the voluntary organisations that are trying to control HIV and AIDS. This is the complaint made by representatives of NGOs at a the State-level meeting on mainstreaming and partnerships on HIV/AIDS here on Friday. Sex workers in Andhra Pradesh are “going into hiding” and are not accessible to NGOs for AIDS prevention programmes. They are not even coming forward to take free condoms distributed by the agencies, said a representative of the NGOs. State sex workers rank third in the prevalence of HIV in the country. While 17.9% of sex workers in Maharashtra were HIV positive, 13.1% of the sex workers in Manipur and 9.7% in Andhra Pradesh were HIV positive. Sex workers undergoing voluntary HIV testing and the use of condoms were key to checking the spread of AIDS. When the NGOs confronted the representatives of the Police Department with the complaint, the latter attempted to stonewall them asking for specific instances. The NACO and APSACS officials had to step in to vouch for them. An official said that details were available in the minutes of the “Crisis Committee Meetings” held periodically and that they would be made available to the Police Department. The NGO representatives cited a sex worker jumping to death from the terrace of a hotel in Kurnool when the police raided it. The woman resorted to the extreme step because relatives did not know about her profession. A great deal of sensitivity was needed to deal with them. The NGOs felt that the police needed to be sensitised to the issue and that the sensitisation should be made part of training new recruits. Prison inmates suffering The officer from the Prisons Department said that HIV positive prisoners in the Central Jail were being denied AIDS medication because they lacked case history and the special documents identifying them as people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA). Responding to the complaint, APSACS Additional Project Director P. Rajendra Prasad said that A.P. would soon implement the Prison Intervention Project (PIP) under which HIV positive prisoners would be provided medication and counselling in the jail itself. Dr. Prasad took to task the NGO that was selected by NACO to implement the PIP. When the NGO representative said that it could not be done for technical reasons, Dr. Prasad said the agency should opt out so that another NGO could be pressed into service. “Telangana prisons are already implementing PIP. There is no reason why A.P. should fall behind,” he said. Hurdles to campaign In yet another salvo against the Police Department, an official of the Road Transport Authority (RTA) complained how a police constable disrupted a gathering at an AIDS awareness street play (burrakatha) in the Pandit Nehru Bus Station. “The constable, saying that pickpockets became active in such gatherings, threatened to book a case against me if there were any complaints,” the officer told the meeting. APSACS Project Director S. Aruna Kumari urged line departments to become partners in the fight against AIDS. Officers from the Women and Child Welfare, College Education, Labour and Visakhapatnam Port Trust gave details about the various programmes they were taking up to promote HIV/AIDS awareness.

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