Aid Paid, Zero for AIDS

A debate is raging on the number of HIV/AIDS patients in India. It could be anywhere in between 5.7 or 2.5 million. However, these are just numbers. Somewhere, we forgot to talk about people. Issues of injustice and discrimination against the counted ones are often neglected.
Among the major national national health programmes, finances for HIV/AIDS is second only to Malaria. It has been occupying a prominent place since the beginning of the Ninth Five Year Plan. By the end of the plan, the financial allocation for the HIV/AIDS programme was almost equal to that of the programme on malaria eradication. While the total outlay on malaria eradication has been Rs. 9,630 million during 1997-2002, that of the HIV/AIDS programme has been Rs. 7,280 million. According to the ministry of health, over the years, the financial allocation to the HIV/AIDS programme has recorded the highest growth (approximately 100 percent rise during 1997-2002) among all national programmes.
Nearly 75 percent of the total funds procured by the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) is officially diverted to prevention and awareness. Rs. 40 billion has been spent in the National AIDS Control Programme or NACP-I and NACP-II since 1998 – towards prevention and awareness alone. A budget of Rs. 11,585 crore has recently been announced for NACP-III, of which a little over 75 percent is towards prevention measures. Besides the major sources, there are several smaller organisations, national and international, involved in awareness building and other prevention mechanism through internal funds.
The question is – Are these massive expenditures and efforts towards prevention, and specially awareness, fulfilling their objectives? Especially, when doctors, and that too of public hospitals, discriminate against HIV positive or AIDS patients?
PK Hota, former secretary in the Union ministry of health, admits that NACO may have failed to utilize its funds properly. He claims that they have succeed on the awareness front.
When a major chunk of the AIDS funds have gone to the awareness generation, at the cost of care and treatment, how come the doctors have remained so unaware? What is the point of even doubling the funds allocated to the HIV/AIDS programme if doctors and public hospitals continue to be so insensitive and inhuman?