Bill Gates gives India $200M to fight AIDS

May 4, 2004

UPI - Monday, May 03, 2004 8:46:44 AM EST

MYSORE, India, May 3 (UPI) -- The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

has given $200 million for AIDS prevention in India, the Wall Street

Journal reported Monday.

The money is establishing 50 clinics in the country's hardest-hit

states to pitch safe sex to prostitutes and the truckers who are

their primary clients.

The clinics are set up at highway truck stops and run by

local " partners, " including trucking and oil companies.

The foundation will also enlist prostitutes to sell the prevention

message to their peers at other clinics, training them to help with

research and even narrate PowerPoint presentations. The effort is

getting marketing help from cricket stars and trying to enlist

Bollywood icons.

By 2008, the foundation hopes to arrest the spread of AIDS in six

Indian states and go nationwide.

India ranks second to South Africa in number of people infected by

HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, with around five million cases.

That's less than 1 percent of India's population about one billion.

But the foundation and other world health officials fear conditions

are ripe for AIDS to explode across the country and beyond, as it did

in Africa.

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