“I pledge to mobilise my workplace communities and civil societies to join the partnership against HIV and AIDS. I pledge to fight against stigma and discrimination against people living with and affected by HIV and AIDS. I pledge to take personal responsibility to talk about HIV and AIDS to my family, friends and children. I pledge to share this pledge to others.”
This pledge was made by the audience at Kisama during the celebration of the World AIDS Day on December 1 that was part of the Hornbill Festival and it was led by none other than the chief minister of the state and a host of officials. The theme for this year’s World AIDS Day was “Hands up for #HIVPrevention”, the hashtag obviously an indicator of the preferred hashtag for its social media campaigns.
The campaign was to have a run up of using various visual media to have ones palm captured in a photo or video with the answer to a set of questions that was released by UNAIDS for the prevention of HIV. The questions were like what needs to be done to reduce prevention, how to increase resources, who needs to be involved in designing and delivering prevention programmes and services, how to make these programmes reach the people most in need, and what policies need to change to strengthen HIV prevention efforts.
It is obvious that there weren’t much activity in the state this time round except for the ceremonial event to mark the day and the usual photo ops to be kept in the record books. The financial crunch that the government is facing is not news anymore. However the government still yet to officially give out a statement why the funding from National Aids Control Organisation(NACO) is not released to the Nagaland State AIDS Control Society (NSACS) to run these centres. As mentioned earlier in this column, the state has 53 HIV/AIDS intervention centres also known as the Drop-in-centres(DICs) in the 11 districts. Nearly 1000 workers are engaged in these DICs run by an NGO by the name NNagaDAO who are not getting the required funds for salary and maintenance since the end of 2015. The organisation had gone on protest in the month of May shutting down the DICs for 2 days. Then it was followed by another agitation in the month of November, this time it was for non release of salaries from December last till March 2016. The intervention workers as expected boycotted the celebration of World Aids Day at Kisama.
With alarming numbers of HIV/AIDS coming in everyday, the attitude of the government and its associated agencies seems pure apathetic by their treatment of the intervention workers and also the implementation of other programmes. The most alarming disclosure was from Mokokchung that the majority of the female HIV infected patients were between the age groups of 14 to 19 and it was between 19 to 25 years of age among the males. Then in the state nearly 900 people below age of 14 were tested positive for HIV. Officials have also disclosed that the infections were generally through the sexual route. This is a very alarming scenario and obviously is not an aberration but is actually the progress report of the organisations empowered and active in the state for the prevention and control of HIV/AIDS.
With the state is going through such a grim situation, the pledge made on the day especially by those holding power sadly sounds more like hollow words and seems more like a mockery to the objectives of UNAIDS, the joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS that also manages the World AIDS Day across the UN member states.
