Act urgently to control HIV/AIDS, says Shekhawat

New Delhi, June 27 (UNI) Vice President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat today underlined the need to act with urgency and firmness to control the spread of HIV/AIDS, which he said would turn into the most frightening killer epidemic in the country if left unchecked.

''Let us without a day's delay overcome the complacency and casualness with which our society is looking at this menace,'' the Vice President urged while speaking here at the launch of the nationwide campaign, Youth Unite for the Victory on AIDS (YUVA).

Mr Shekhawat said special focus should be on the 26 crore people living below the poverty line and suffering deprivation, disease and illiteracy, and are therefore soft targets for the infection.

''Nutritional deficiencies hasten the onset of AIDS and its progression,'' he said adding that educating people and creating mass awareness about the disease and its prevention was the key to success of the project.

''Implementation of this key task should be a mission. It should also be inclusive of people's participation to the maximum possible extent. For this we need to reach out to all those who are vulnerable to AIDS infection.'' Mr Shekhawat pointed out that as against one case reported in 1986, in just two decades more than 52 lakh people have contracted the dreaded disease. A disturbing dimension was that it was now spreading into rural areas and was affecting the youth in particular.

The Vice President lauded the move of Panchayati Raj Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar to involve local bodies the YUVA campaign and said this would give a firm institutional support to the programme in villages across the country.

The involvement of young panchayat leaders would definitely prove effective in taking the campaign deep into the remotest rural areas, he said.

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