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Gates Foundation to launch AIDS project in Andhra Pradesh

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has deputed a team to work out an action plan to launch a pilot project in Andhra Pradesh for combating AIDS.

Andhra Pradesh Medical and Health Minister Kodela Sivaprasada Rao told reporters on Thursday that the state has been chosen for the pilot project under the US $100 million commitment announced by Microsoft Corporation chairman Bill Gates for the prevention of AIDS in India.

"The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation team has come to do a survey in Andhra Pradesh and find the areas where they can start the programme and the districts where the incidence of AIDS is high. They will also take stock of what sort of programmes should be implemented here for combating AIDS," the minister said.

"Andhra Pradesh is friendly and proactive. We have already taken up the Hepatitis-B vaccination programme in a big way as part of a US $25 million programme funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation over a five-year period. It is in this backdrop that the foundation has chosen Andhra Pradesh as a role model for other states in the country," Sivaprasada Rao said.

The foundation's study would include an evaluation of the current programmes underway for prevention of AIDS. The study, which will be ready in four to five weeks, will suggest measures for strengthening the existing programmes and work out concrete proposals for the pilot project.

The minister said the state would observe World AIDS Day on December 1 in a big way. While India ranks second in the world after South Africa in the number of AIDS cases, Andhra Pradesh has the dubious distinction of being the state with the second highest incidence of cases in the country, after Maharashtra.

Out of 42 million HIV-positive patients the world over India had 3.97 million by the end of 2001. Andhra Pradesh accounted for a tenth of this, with 400,000 HIV-positive patients.

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