Dr. SK Quraishi's Visit to Sonagachi Project

[Guest guest]

Dr. SY Quraishi Director General National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO,

India) visits Sonagachi Project

Dr. SY Quraishi, Director General NACO India visited Sonagachi Project and

Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee offices on Saturday 9th July 2005.

Accompanying him were Mr. S Suresh Kumar Project

Director WBSAPCS, Dr. Ojha Deputy Director WBSAPCS and Mr. Mahesh of

Project Support Unit West Bengal.

Meeting sex worker leadership and project coordinators of the Sonagachi Project

in their Kolkata headquarters of 12/5 Nilmoni Mitra Street in the morning, Dr.

Quraishi discussed the issues of

HIV/AIDS in India, and the role sex workers' organisations in preventing the

spread of the disease. A project briefing by Mrinal Kanti Dutta Program Director

Durbar was followed by an interactive session with sex worker leadership of

Durbar. Dr. Quraishi stressed the need for improving condom promotion and usage

among clients of

sex workers. In response to a query by him, Swapna Gayen (Secretary DMSC) said

that the current levels of consistent condom use by sex workers and clients was

more than 80% - up dramatically from

around 2% when Sonagachi Project first began in 1992. Dr. Quraishi reminded the

sex worker leadership and project personnel gathered, that Sonagachi Project

needed to work at closing this gap of 20% and try and ensure almost 100% condom

use.

He suggested that henceforth, sex workers must try to promote condom use by

extolling its pleasure-giving values: in a frank discussion with the people

present, he said that men usually ejaculate by 3 to

4 minutes, and that sex workers should tell their customers that by using a

condom, the client can delay his ejaculation and thereby increase his pleasure

as well as the sex worker's pleasure and also get his money's worth!

Sex workers present accepted his suggestion and said that their

subsequent awareness and peer education would include this point.

After a short visit to the Durbar VCCTC - Mamata Care and Treatment Centre Dr,

Quraishi met the press. Responding to a question by the media, Dr. Quraishi

pointed out that India had around 5.1 million HIV positive persons of which 2

million were women. Of the 2 million

affected women, 1.8 million were women in monogamous relationships -and these

figures, he said, stressed the importance of intervention programmes that

targeted sex workers and bridge populations. He also said that although the

national prevalence of HIV was less than 1%, the prevalence was high in focal

areas. " We do not want to go the Africa way " , he said saying that everyone

needed to be concerned and needed to act now to prevent a public health

emergency.

Dr. Quraishi then visited the Palatak Clinic in Sonagachi sex work site. He

briefly visited the clinic and met with peer educators and field staff. At the

gathering in front of Palatak Clinic, Dr. Quraishi told the assembled workers

and activists of Durbar that what had been achieved here was a national landmark

and that the Sonagachi Project had shown the way to the rest of the country. He

said that NACO was recommending the Sonagachi Project model for replication all

over the country and Durbar therefore needed to continue their good work. His

comments in the Durbar Visitors'

Book read: " A very educative visit. The Organisation is doing a very good job

for creating HIV and AIDS awareness among CSWs (sic) and clients. A good model

for other places. Signed, SY Quraishi " .

Durbar leadership raised the issue of representation of sex workers'

organisations in NACP-III Steering Committee - Dr.Quraishi said that he agreed

in principle regarding this and said NACO will look into the matter.

Durbar leadership also flagged the recommended deletion of Section 8 of ITPA

(the section dealing with punishment for 'soliciting'). Recommendation for

deleting this section did not go through as a few

states and a number of Central ministers opposed that. Dr. Quraishi took note of

Durbar's position regarding the issue. Dr. Quraishi then visited AK Street in

Sonagachi - the site of the proposed Health, Research and Training Centre of

Durbar and responded favourably to the leadership's request for support of the

Durbar Peer Training Institute once it was completed.

Earlier in the morning, Durbar activists and positive women welcomed Dr.

Quraishi and his entourage with bouquets and red ribbon badges made by Srishti

vocational centre run by Durbar.

For more details and pictures of the visit, please visit the Durbar Official

website: www.durbar.org

Report Compiled by DMSC-TAAH Team

E-mail: <dmsc_taah@...>