Health Minister Questions Stress on Condoms in AIDS Fight
India’s new health minister, Dr. Harsh Vardhan, has said that he would like to see a change in the way that the government promotes awareness of AIDS and H.I.V., with more emphasis on “promoting the integrity of the sexual relationship between husband and wife,” which he said was “part of our culture.”
“The thrust of the AIDS campaign should not only be on the use of condoms,” he said in a telephone interview last week. “This sends the wrong message that you can have any kind of illicit sexual relationship, but as long as you’re using a condom, it’s fine.”
India reported its first case of AIDS in 1986, and for some years, there were fears that it would become a crisis on the scale that it has become in Africa. The National AIDS Control Organization, a government body, was established in 1992 to deal with the threat. Over the years, it emphasized the use of condoms and clean needles for high-risk groups — including sex workers, drug users and gay men.
The projections for AIDS in India turned out to be inflated, however, and while the country today has the third-largest population of H.I.V.-infected people — 2.1 million, after South Africa (6.1 million) and Nigeria (3.4 million) — the prevalence is just 0.3 percent of the total adult population, below the threshold of a generalized epidemic, and confined largely to high-risk groups. A 2011 United Nations AIDS report found that new infections in India had dropped by half in the last decade.
In India, more than 85 percent of the cases are a result of unprotected sex, according to the National AIDS Control Organization.
V.K. Subburaj, the head of the organization, said that condom promotion was not directed at the general public, but rather at high-risk groups, like most of the agency’s activities.
“The minister thought that we were promoting illegal activities through condoms,” he said.
Sex work is illegal in India, and the Supreme Court reinstated a law last December criminalizing, among other things, gay sex.
Mr. Subburaj said that the promotion of condom use for high-risk groups was unlikely to change.
“For the vulnerable groups, we cannot tell them about morals,” he said.
But addressing Dr. Vardhan’s comments, Mr. Subburaj said that the “moral fabric” in the country was “becoming very thin,” and he added that his agency would make changes to the information, education and communication strategy and increase its activities, particularly for the general population.
“We will tell them, ‘Be faithful,’ ” he said.
The “Abstinence, Be Faithful, Condom Use,” or “A.B.C.,” campaign is a long-running strategy to promote H.I.V./AIDS awareness globally and is said to have had success in countries like Uganda, which has drastically reduced its incidence of AIDS and H.I.V.
Mr. Subburaj declined to give further information about the specifics of a change in messaging, saying that the consultations with Dr. Vardhan had happened only recently.
This is an uncertain time for India’s AIDS efforts, as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which worked with the government from 2003 to 2013 to help implement the national AIDS program, has exited the effort, and the government has been tasked with taking up the program alone.
Any shift in communications strategy away from condom promotion, even if it were only for the general public, would raise alarm bells for some AIDS activists.
Anjali Gopalan founded and runs the Naz Foundation, which helps people living with H.I.V./AIDS and spreads awareness of the disease. Naz has also lobbied against the reinstatement of Article 377, the law criminalizing homosexuality, and has run a peer education program on sexuality, gender-based violence, and HIV/AIDS, disseminating information at colleges and universities in Delhi.
“The reality is that people do step out of marriage, and therefore you have to deal with it, and ensure that they do not bring back infection,” she said.
“This whole debate about what is moral in our culture, I think we really need to look at it,” Ms. Gopalan said. “What culture are we talking about?”
C'tsy: International New York Times
Dr. Harsh Vardhan's clarification
An unseemly controversy is sought to be generated in some media over the criticism of “so-called sex education” in my personal web site.
While respecting the media’s tradition of highlighting diversity of opinion on social, political and economic matters, I have comprehensively denied that I propose a ban on sex education as suggested by a prominent newspaper through banner headlines today.
I am a medical professional who has embraced rationalism and I whole-heartedly support pedagogy that is scientific and culturally acceptable. Anything abrasive to common sensibilities and articulated as such by responsible persons should be discarded and replaced by consensually accepted learning processes.
I have clarified that the view expressed on the web site was entirely my own and made in the context of the UPA government’s 2007 decision to introduce the Adolescence Education Programme (AE) in its original form. Even the chief ministers of UPA-ruled states had objected to it and subsequently it was modified.
As chief ministerial candidate of my party in the 2013 election, I said that full right to make transparent my agenda for education, among other subjects of governance. Value –based school learning processes are common in all countries and I had intentioned implementing such a format in Delhi’s schools. In September 2002, a Division Bench of the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India had upheld the government’s right to introduce Value Education in the school curriculum (B.G.Verghese, Aruna Roy and others Vs. NCERT, Writ Petition 98
Crudity and graphic representation of culturally objectionable symbols as manifested in the UPA’s so-called sex education programme cannot be called sex education. Every education system must strive to have an ideal curriculum and to that extent my stand is valid.
I had earlier held the Education portfolio (along with Health) in the Delhi government between 1993 and 1998, introduced several lasting reforms in the curriculum of the state’s schools in consultation with experts. There was a sex education component in the curriculum then too but nobody reported objections with it.
I pointed out that thanks to bipartisan opposition, AEP was substantially modified. It is now positioned by the Department of Education and National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) as a key intervention in preventing new HIV infections and reducing social vulnerability to the infection.
The programme is implemented in all states across the country through the Department of Education (DoE) in collaboration with the State AIDS Control Societies (SACS).
The objective of the AEP is to provide 100 per cent quality coverage for all senior schools in the country so that students in Grades IX–XI have adequate and accurate knowledge about HIV in the context of life skills.
Sex education that builds societies free of gender discrimination, teenage pregnancy, HIV-AIDS proliferation, pornography addiction, etc. should be the goal.
India’s new health minister, Dr. Harsh Vardhan, has said that he would like to see a change in the way that the government promotes awareness of AIDS and H.I.V., with more emphasis on “promoting the integrity of the sexual relationship between husband and wife,” which he said was “part of our culture.”
“The thrust of the AIDS campaign should not only be on the use of condoms,” he said in a telephone interview last week. “This sends the wrong message that you can have any kind of illicit sexual relationship, but as long as you’re using a condom, it’s fine.”
Media got it wrong again. I am against "so called" sex education not sex education per se. Crudity,Vulgarity out, values in. My fb has more
— Dr. Harsh Vardhan (@drharshvardhan) June 27, 2014
India reported its first case of AIDS in 1986, and for some years, there were fears that it would become a crisis on the scale that it has become in Africa. The National AIDS Control Organization, a government body, was established in 1992 to deal with the threat. Over the years, it emphasized the use of condoms and clean needles for high-risk groups — including sex workers, drug users and gay men.
The projections for AIDS in India turned out to be inflated, however, and while the country today has the third-largest population of H.I.V.-infected people — 2.1 million, after South Africa (6.1 million) and Nigeria (3.4 million) — the prevalence is just 0.3 percent of the total adult population, below the threshold of a generalized epidemic, and confined largely to high-risk groups. A 2011 United Nations AIDS report found that new infections in India had dropped by half in the last decade.
In India, more than 85 percent of the cases are a result of unprotected sex, according to the National AIDS Control Organization.
V.K. Subburaj, the head of the organization, said that condom promotion was not directed at the general public, but rather at high-risk groups, like most of the agency’s activities.
“The minister thought that we were promoting illegal activities through condoms,” he said.
Sex work is illegal in India, and the Supreme Court reinstated a law last December criminalizing, among other things, gay sex.
Mr. Subburaj said that the promotion of condom use for high-risk groups was unlikely to change.
“For the vulnerable groups, we cannot tell them about morals,” he said.
But addressing Dr. Vardhan’s comments, Mr. Subburaj said that the “moral fabric” in the country was “becoming very thin,” and he added that his agency would make changes to the information, education and communication strategy and increase its activities, particularly for the general population.
“We will tell them, ‘Be faithful,’ ” he said.
The “Abstinence, Be Faithful, Condom Use,” or “A.B.C.,” campaign is a long-running strategy to promote H.I.V./AIDS awareness globally and is said to have had success in countries like Uganda, which has drastically reduced its incidence of AIDS and H.I.V.
Mr. Subburaj declined to give further information about the specifics of a change in messaging, saying that the consultations with Dr. Vardhan had happened only recently.
This is an uncertain time for India’s AIDS efforts, as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which worked with the government from 2003 to 2013 to help implement the national AIDS program, has exited the effort, and the government has been tasked with taking up the program alone.
Any shift in communications strategy away from condom promotion, even if it were only for the general public, would raise alarm bells for some AIDS activists.
Anjali Gopalan founded and runs the Naz Foundation, which helps people living with H.I.V./AIDS and spreads awareness of the disease. Naz has also lobbied against the reinstatement of Article 377, the law criminalizing homosexuality, and has run a peer education program on sexuality, gender-based violence, and HIV/AIDS, disseminating information at colleges and universities in Delhi.
“The reality is that people do step out of marriage, and therefore you have to deal with it, and ensure that they do not bring back infection,” she said.
“This whole debate about what is moral in our culture, I think we really need to look at it,” Ms. Gopalan said. “What culture are we talking about?”
C'tsy: International New York Times
Dr. Harsh Vardhan's clarification
An unseemly controversy is sought to be generated in some media over the criticism of “so-called sex education” in my personal web site.
While respecting the media’s tradition of highlighting diversity of opinion on social, political and economic matters, I have comprehensively denied that I propose a ban on sex education as suggested by a prominent newspaper through banner headlines today.
I am a medical professional who has embraced rationalism and I whole-heartedly support pedagogy that is scientific and culturally acceptable. Anything abrasive to common sensibilities and articulated as such by responsible persons should be discarded and replaced by consensually accepted learning processes.
Disappointed over the way sections of the media have distorted my statements about safe sex in an interview to New York Times on June 24.
— Dr. Harsh Vardhan (@drharshvardhan) June 25, 2014
I have clarified that the view expressed on the web site was entirely my own and made in the context of the UPA government’s 2007 decision to introduce the Adolescence Education Programme (AE) in its original form. Even the chief ministers of UPA-ruled states had objected to it and subsequently it was modified.
As chief ministerial candidate of my party in the 2013 election, I said that full right to make transparent my agenda for education, among other subjects of governance. Value –based school learning processes are common in all countries and I had intentioned implementing such a format in Delhi’s schools. In September 2002, a Division Bench of the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India had upheld the government’s right to introduce Value Education in the school curriculum (B.G.Verghese, Aruna Roy and others Vs. NCERT, Writ Petition 98
RT @ashutosh83B: Harshwardhan wants to take India in Stone Age.
#YoBJPSoSanskaari
pic.twitter.com/kYJROJEnet
— aarti (@aarchie02) June 27, 2014
Crudity and graphic representation of culturally objectionable symbols as manifested in the UPA’s so-called sex education programme cannot be called sex education. Every education system must strive to have an ideal curriculum and to that extent my stand is valid.
I had earlier held the Education portfolio (along with Health) in the Delhi government between 1993 and 1998, introduced several lasting reforms in the curriculum of the state’s schools in consultation with experts. There was a sex education component in the curriculum then too but nobody reported objections with it.
I pointed out that thanks to bipartisan opposition, AEP was substantially modified. It is now positioned by the Department of Education and National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) as a key intervention in preventing new HIV infections and reducing social vulnerability to the infection.
The programme is implemented in all states across the country through the Department of Education (DoE) in collaboration with the State AIDS Control Societies (SACS).
The objective of the AEP is to provide 100 per cent quality coverage for all senior schools in the country so that students in Grades IX–XI have adequate and accurate knowledge about HIV in the context of life skills.
Sex education that builds societies free of gender discrimination, teenage pregnancy, HIV-AIDS proliferation, pornography addiction, etc. should be the goal.
