Project title:  Project on education, counselling and control of STI/HIV/AIDS for truckers

Implementing body: Family Planning Association of India (FPAI)

Aim: To reduce STI/HIV/AIDS transmission and promote safer sexual practice among truckers in Mohali

Although India has a relatively low HIV prevalence rate, in the mid-1990s it became obvious that there are small pockets of communities at greater risk.

India’s National AIDS Control Programme estimates that 15–35 per cent of India’s trucking community is HIV positive. They are considered a 'bridge' across which HIV travels from more vulnerable groups into the wider community. The reasons aren’t hard to understand. This group is highly mobile and they’re away from home a lot. Almost four million people in India are currently living with HIV/AIDS.

There are a number of factors that threaten to accelerate the spread of the epidemic. These include:

• migration from poor rural areas to more sophisticated urban centres in search of work
• a low literacy level of 52 per cent (with a big gap between men at 67 per cent and women at only 43 per cent)
• stigma and discrimination
• widespread ignorance of the basic facts about HIV/AIDS, its transmission and means of prevention

Stigma and ignorance have often resulted in people living with HIV/AIDS being denied equitable access to health services.

Cases have even been reported of people living with AIDS being confined to hospital isolation wards because there are fears that they’re contagious. The caste system and the lower status of girls and women (although diminishing due to organized resistance) are also factors.

The lack of access to services – a particularly acute problem in rural areas – also impacts on the spread of HIV/AIDS.