Business Case

ICT

TO COMBAT

HIV/AIDS

Better intervening HIV/ AIDS with ICT

The key role of ICT in the prevention and mitigation efforts for HIV/ AIDS in India is generating awareness and providing practical information to people and in capacity building.

Threat on the doorstep

In order to successfully contain the spread of HIV/AIDS, which has such profound socio-economic implications, it is vital that preventive interventions be more effectively targeted. This is all the more pertinent since no amount of local resources and aid money seems enough for the enormous task at hand, not just at the national level but at the regional level as well. Until recently, government officials and public health experts in India considered HIV/AIDS to be primarily a health problem that could be addressed best through medical intervention and behaviour change However, there is now widespread recognition that HIV/AIDS is a development problem that has profound implications not just for public health, but also for the economy and society. As a result, there is strong support at the very top of the current political leadership for greater interministerial and inter-sectoral collaboration in the fight against HIV/AIDS and the mainstreaming of HIV/AIDS into development programmes. There is also agreement that more expenditure is required to strike at the root causes of the spread of HIV/AIDS pandemic. These strategic priorities are reflected in the 3rd phase of the National AIDS Control Programme (NACPIII), which will be launched in early 2006. Under NACP-III, one of the main objectives is to prevent new infections by covering all high-risk groups with targeted interventions and scaling up interventions among the general population (especially women, youth, children and migrants). Another key objective is to strengthen care, support and treatment programmes for people affected by HIV/AIDS and link them to preventions activities. In India, HIV prevalence is low compared to sub-Saharan...