International Conference on alcohol &HIV

[Guest guest]

International Conference on alcohol & HIV

Aditya Mukherjee, TNN, Oct 9, 2010,

The Second International Conference on Alcohol and HIV, which was held recently

at the India Habitat Centre, has called for multilevel community based

approaches for combating pervasive alcohol use and the resulting HIV

transmission.

A special emphasis during the discussion was on gender norms. The researchers

emphasised the need to produce greater gender equality and to shift norms that

place aggression, violence and sexual exploitation within the masculine domain

and are aggravated under the influence of alcohol.

Ongoing research in different countries suggests that women's risk of

gender-based and sexual violence is also increased by their partner's alcohol

consumption. Therefore, without addressing gender issues, efforts to reduce

alcohol-related sexual-risk behaviour might only be partly successful.

Speaking at the conference, Dr Ravi Verma, regional director, International

Center for Research on Women (ICRW), said, " Gender is missing from many alcohol

related as well as HIV related interventions. Interventions of any kind in the

development sector must be conscientious of gender. Failure to do so may

reinforce existing discrimination against women and girls. "

According to him, the majority of people who go for paid sex are problem

drinkers and that they don't even use condoms. Some of the eminent researchers

and subject experts who participated in the conference included Dr Kendall

, director, Alcohol and HIV/AIDS Research, National Institute on Alcohol

Abuse and Alcoholism, Dr J. Schensul, founding director, Institute for

Community Research and Dr KS Reddy, president, Public Health Foundation of

India.

The revelations of the studies presented by the key researchers prove that

alcohol plays a direct and indirect role in promoting situations and decisions

leading to unprotected sex with multiple partners in the general population and

in vulnerable populations including mobile workers, and female sex workers, and

those infected with HIV.

The conference was organised by ICRW, in partnership with the Public Health

Foundation of India, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the

Institute for Community Research. They had brought together programme

specialists and researchers from India and neighbouring South Asian countries as

well as US researchers working in India.

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