A Rs 2,550 crore National AIDS Control Support Project was today approved by the government to increase safe behaviour among high risk groups in pursuance of the national goal of accelerated reversal of HIV epidemic by 2017.
The approval was given by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, official sources said.
The project, proposed by the Department of AIDS Control, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, will be under the National AIDS Control Programme (NACP), which is financed by Government of India and the World Bank in equal proportion.
It will contribute towards intensifying and consolidating prevention services with focus on highly vulnerable populations and high risk groups.
This would help in providing the desired impetus required for further consolidation of gains made in containing the spread of HIV infection in the country.
Its primary focus would be to strengthen and scale up prevention interventions and related strategies for sub-groups of population identified to be most-at-risk by the NACP. These include Female Sex Workers (FSW), men who have sex with men (MSM), Transgender (TG)/Hijra populations and Injecting Drug Users (IDU).
The NACP has been a remarkable success in its third phase (2007-12) and the country is on track to meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) for HIV prevention and control. Over the last decade, there has been a reduction of 57 per cent in the new HIV infections and 29 per cent fall in AIDS-related deaths.
