NGOs want Nagaland included in national anti-Hepatitis drive

DIMAPUR, JULY: Nongovernmental organizations in Nagaland have urged the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) not to ‘leave Nagaland behind in its Hepatitis national program.’
The NACO has announced a national hepatitis program on World Hepatitis Day to initiate prevention, care and treatment for Hepatitis C Virus (HCV). The event is scheduled to be held at the Hotel Marriott in Mumbai.
In a letter addressed to the special secretary to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, to the Director General of NACO, to the president of NNagaDAO and to the director of Kripa Foundation, activist Abou Mere highlighted the research data of Phek and Wokha documented by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR/RMRC), through the Integrated Bio-Behavioral Assessment (IBBA) study among IDUs in 2006 and 2009.
According to the Data (Ref 2) the prevalence rate in Phek stood at 5.4% (2006) to 8.7% (2009) and 16.7% (2006) to 20.8 % (2006) in Wokha, signifying not only an alarming rate of HCV infection among the community but also an ever increasing trend.
Stating that Hepatitis C issue in Nagaland has emerged to be of urgent concern, he however, said even in recent years not much was done by the state government, civil organizations nor the NGOs working in the field of HIV/AIDS and other health sectors, while the epidemic continues to spread rapidly at an alarmingly rate.
He cautioned that unless the emerging threat is addressed now, people of Nagaland in general and particularly the IDUs would face a huge HCV disease burden thus challenging the very State health programmes in the coming years.
In the light of the above stated circumstances, Mere has urged the NACO not to ‘leave Nagaland behind in the program.
The National AIDS Control Organisation, established in 1992, is a division of India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare that provides leadership to HIV/AIDS control programme in India through 35 HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control Societies, and is “the nodal organisation for formulation of policy and implementation of programs for prevention and control of HIV/AIDS in India.”
In 2010, NACO approved the TeachAIDS curriculum for use in India, an innovation which represented the first time that HIV/AIDS education could be provided in a curriculum which did not need to be coupled with sex education.