Ahmedabad: As message sinks in, Alang loses its AIDS bomb tag

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As message sinks in, Alang loses its AIDS bomb tag

Milind Ghatwai

Ahmedabad, November 30: WHEN a giant condom walks through the streets of Alang

on Monday, World AIDS Day, few are likely to collapse into giggles. There'll be

whispers but they will only suggest that the large migrant population has seen

it before in public.

In a high-risk group such as migrant labourers, who frequent prostitutes,

qceptance of condom is an encouraging sign in a place often referred to as a

`ticking AIDS bomb.''

There are 42 HIV-positive patients, a number that looks much smaller given that

more than 35,000 workers abound the shanties lining the street across the

ship-breaking yard. ``We don't preach anything. We simply encourage them to use

condoms,'' says Vinod Makwana, in-charge of STD care in Project AIDS at Alang.

The project was started by Bhavnagar Blood Bank with support from National AIDS

Control Organisation and Gujarat AIDS Control Society five years ago.

``They would call us AIDSwallah and run away from us. Behind our back they would

make fun of us,'' says project incharge at Alang, Mahesh Jani, remembering how

difficult it was to even talk to labourers.

Groups of workers would squat across across the road and scan every person going

in and out of the project office. ``Now we offer treatment for STD. People

saunter in just to read slogans and wallpapers on AIDS,'' says Sameer Solanki,

an outreach worker. Condoms are distributed from as many as 70 places and

mostly near places where people are going to use them, says Jani of the

project's moderate succes. ``Sex is not sin, unsafe sex is'' is one of the

slogans that outreach workers, including 15 women, carry to workers.

Given that there are few women in Alang, multiple partners is an accepted fact.

Poor women from nearby villages come to Alang in the guise of selling vegetables

and fruits, forcing the project to extend its scope to 20 villages.

``Mostly women take away condoms for they are more prone to contracting the

disease, ''says an Oriya worker manning a condom distribution centre. He calls

it top like most others but is comfortable talking about it. Interestingly,

quacks, whose presence is taken as inevitable in places like Alang, have been a

major help

in popularising condoms.

With two small hospitals , the healthcare scenario is anyway dismal in Alang,

but workers still prefer quacks for minor complaints. Quacks operate from huts

that also stock condoms along with whatever they sell under the name of

medicine.

``Figures at Alang are always bloated, prevalance of AIDS is much more in

Bhavnagar,'' says Jayesh Kansara, in-charge of pathology laboratory at Alang

Hospital, the only private hospital here. Dr D H Shah of Red Cross Hospital

agrees. HIV-detection tests are carried out at only these two hospitals here.

Both Kansara and Shah say they haven't detected anything alarming in the last

few years and say the number of HIV cases is negligible. ``We only talk of

sexual safety. Awareness is on the rise and there is significant improvement in

workers' behaviour,'' says Sanjay Desai of the blood bank. Dr Niloo Vaishnav of

the bank says there is an ambitious plan to map all migrant workers and

coordinate with the governments of the state from where they hail.

Meanwhile, describing Alang as vulnerable because of the high number of migrant

population, Dr D N Saxena of the Gujarat AIDS Control Society, informed that the

threat has diminished in the last four years.

``One cannot deny that four years ago the situation was here was threatening

with more than 35 cases of AIDS reported in a short span. Today, the number has

gone down,'' says Saxena.niloovaishnav