The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has come forward to provide a technical assistance grant of $ 1.47 million for the North Eastern states of Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Manipur and Nagaland to address social and health issues associated with road improvement.
The grant would be utilised to carry out assessment work and capacity development programmes in key agencies to help reduce the incidence of infections in areas earmarked for major road projects.
“The assistance will help provide stronger service delivery capabilities for HIV prevention in the five states, and will complement the work of the National AIDS Control Organisation,” a press statement of the bank stated.
It added that new and upgraded roads may result in broad benefits to communities, particularly those in remote areas, but studies show they can also be a conduit for the spread of sexually transmitted infections.
In the northeastern India, HIV prevalence is higher than in many other parts of the country. Increasingly, this is being driven by heterosexual transmission, and poses a major threat to poor rural women who lack equality in access to health and nutrition services, and are less involved in social and political decision making than men.
The technical assistance will develop a project baseline, monitoring and evaluation system to provide information on the interaction between HIV transmission, road construction and high-risk behaviour.
It will roll out HIV training and skills transfer programmes, targeting the private sector, health service providers and condom distributors, and will build up the HIV awareness capacity of non-government organisations, community-based organisations, people living with HIV, and trade unions.
It will also complement ongoing direct interventions by state agencies to prevent HIV, targeting construction workers in camp sites, and communities directly affected by infrastructure work.
