IMPHAL, Dec 5: Levelling charges that the State AIDS policy has miserably failed to take care of the widows and children living with HIV/AIDS the Manipur Positive Women Network, MPWN+ has condemned the state World AIDS day observation.
Further claiming the state AIDS policy to be outdated, Aribam Tanuja Sharmi, secretary, MPWN+ in a press conference held today at the MPNW+ office, has added that free distribution of ART is not enough for prevention of AIDS.
She has further claimed that it is high time the state policy put more emphasis on women and children living with HIV/AIDS as the existing state AIDS policy were framed in 1996 with the main emphasis laid upon the IDU users as their number was quite high in the state at that time.
She has also said that the spread of the virus has gone down among the IDU users of the state whereas it’s spread among the homosexuals, CSWs and mother to child infection have gone up and so the state AIDS policy makers should put more emphasis on them and upgrade the existing State AIDS policy.
She has further charged that the Manipur AIDS Control Society, MACS has failed in its objective to provide for the people living with HIV/AIDS, she has further claimed that MPWN+ members were discriminated when they had gone to the MACS office asking for women based projects.
She also claimed that there have been instances when the police guarding the state secretariat building had discriminated against them.
Maintaining that it is always hard for women living with HIV/AIDS to go out and find work for their livelihood, she has further appealed to the government to provide them with projects based on women only.
While speaking at the interaction with media focusing on the ‘women voice’, she has further added that the state urgently needs health care centres for women living with HIV/AIDS and mother and child living with HIV/AIDS as the total of women living with HIV/AIDS has reached 9733 and that of children is 2000.
