WASHINGTON : India has the second highest number of people with HIV/AIDS in the world. Nearly four million people in the country are infected with the dreaded disease. Only South Africa has more cases, with five million people carrying the disease, according to official figures.

Although the number of people with AIDS accounts for less than 1 percent of India’s population, the numbers are still dangerously high and some steps have to be taken to arrest the spread of HIV.

Several nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and aid agencies have launched a nationwide program to halt the disease, but they face an uphill battle because of the enormous social and cultural stigma attached to AIDS, said two representatives of NGOs working in India on HIV/AIDS.

They were Dr. Sujit Ghosh, who has been working at the International HIV/AIDS Alliance (the Alliance) since December 2000 and D.T. Reji Chandra, who has been director of Palmyrah Workers Development Society (PWDS), a development NGO in Tamil Nadu, India, since 1988.

The fear is that India would overtake South Africa if steps were not taken to curb the disease, they said. Among other projects, PWDS, in partnership with the International HIV/AIDS Alliance, implements an HIV/AIDS care and support program, working particularly with women and children.

Both Dr. Ghosh and Chandra said in an interview with News India-Times that their strategy was to focus on prevention so that HIV/AIDS can be contained and stopped from spreading to the general population. Prevention activities focus on high-risk populations such as sex workers and truck drivers who are the likely core transmitters of HIV. They, however, said they were working also to build awareness in low-risk rural populations and will endeavor to promote prevention through outreach projects related to reproductive health. The Alliance and the PWDS are linked with ‘Step Forward,’ a long-term, international program of Abbott Laboratories and the Abbott Laboratories Fund in their work in India. ‘Step Forward’ was launched to help improve the lives of AIDS orphans and vulnerable children around the world.

Currently supporting programs in Romania, Tanzania, Burkina Faso and India, ‘Step Forward’ assists children, families and communities affected by AIDS by improving local health care services, providing voluntary HIV counseling and testing, supporting primary and secondary education programs and providing for basic community needs, according to Jeff Richardson, executive director of the program who is based in Washington, D.C.

Besides poverty and the lack of access to basic needs such as food, shelter and clothing, impoverished families in India struggle with the compounding physical, financial and emotional impact of HIV/AIDS, he said.

To address these basic needs, ‘Step Forward’ works with the Alliance and PWDS to support programs that strengthen local organizations’ abilities to respond to the growing number of children affected by HIV/AIDS in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and New Delhi. These model programs build on established HIV care initiatives in order to extend community-based support to children affected by AIDS. Both the representatives welcomed the Bush initiative in allocating $15 billion for HIV/AIDS prevention. Describing it as a “great commitment,” they expressed the hope that more governments would follow the initiative.