Posts
Ghulam Nabi Azad, India’s Union Minister of Health and
Family Welfare, announced the launch of the National AIDS Control Support
Project (NACSP) IV, which will target New Delhi high-risk groups, including
female sex workers, men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, truckers,
and other migrant populations. Although earlier NACSP efforts received funding
primarily from multilateral and bilateral development agencies, domestic
support and the World Bank will provide most of the funds for the current
effort. The World Bank will finance $255 million of the project’s total $510
million cost interest free.
“Civil Society organizations, community groups, donor
partners, and international organizations” participated in NACSP IV strategic
planning, which mapped out five strategies designed to prevent HIV and ensure
access to treatment and care for HIV-infected people. NACSP will fund three
strategies—prevention, behavior change, and institutional strengthening—and the
national budget and other donors will support care, treatment, and support for
HIV-infected people and strategic information management and surveillance
systems. The project also planned to support communications and advocacy
efforts that aimed to reduce HIV stigma and promote HIV prevention.
Program planners estimated that NACSP would reach 90 percent
of the target populations by 2017 and would prevent approximately 3 million new
HIV infections. Azad stated that more than 99.5 percent of India’s population
was HIV-free at present.
