Country's voluntary group organises rally for AIDS awareness

Chandigarh, Sept 13 : A voluntary organization in Chandigarh took out a rally on Saturday to promote awareness about deadly virus, AIDS.

The rally with the theme, 'All Rights, Women Rights', was organised by voluntary organization named Indian Network for People living with HIV/AIDS (INP+) which has 22 state level networks representing 1,25,000 members in the country.

The members of the organization asked AIDS control organizations to take HIV positive people into confidence and make sure better availability of first and second line drugs for treatment of the disease.

"We are requesting the states AIDS control society in states surrounding Chandigarh to involve HIV positive people in their programme and make a network of them and support them. Secondly, we want that there should be scale up of the first line and second line treatment of the disease," said K.K. Abraham, president of INP+.

School children who participated in the rally performed street plays to spread awareness and dispel myths about the disease.

India accounts for roughly half the estimated HIV infected population in Asia with 2.47 million cases.

India was believed to have the world's biggest HIV-positive caseload with 5.7 million infections, but a new U.N.-backed estimate released last year almost halved that number after a new survey based on population rather than specific groups.

But the report warned that India must be extremely careful as people were still ignorant about use of condoms and AIDS, especially among drug users and women in rural India.

ANI