CHENNAI: Four regional centres of excellence for blood will be set up, and one of them will be in Chennai, Union Minister for Health Anbumani Ramadoss said on Saturday.

Besides supporting the state-of-the-art blood extraction, separation and testing procedures, these centres will offer courses in Transfusion Medicine, he said, addressing a meeting to mainstream the Red Ribbon Clubs in institutions of higher education in Tamil Nadu. The function was organised by the Tamil Nadu State AIDS Control Society.

The Government was setting up 500 blood component separation units to increase the use of component blood for transfusions, he said, calling for a movement to promote voluntary blood donation.

Under the third phase of the National AIDS Control Programme, $2.5 billion would be available for HIV intervention. Eighty per cent of the money would go towards `prevention' activities. The Bill on preventing stigma and discrimination against persons with HIV/AIDS in teaching institutions, treatment centres and workplaces might come up for discussion during the winter session of Parliament, Dr.Anbumani said.

He lauded Governor Surjit Singh Barnala and the Tamil Nadu AIDS Control Society for responding immediately to the plan for setting up the Red Ribbon Clubs in association with institutes of higher learning. It was important to reach the youth, as they were emerging as the new high risk group in an epidemic that was quickly spreading to rural areas and into the general population.

While awareness was generated through prevention communication, it did not result in behaviour change. One way to address this was to promote health education in schools, Dr.Anbumani said .

Mr. Barnala said every individual should strive for eliminating infection. Earlier, he released the Red Ribbon handbook.

Health Minister K.K.S.S.R. Ramachandran said it was important to take care of youth who were in the most productive age group.

Higher Education Minister K. Ponmudi said that while stigma and discrimination were still prevalent, things had vastly improved since 1986 when the first case was detected in Chennai.

Higher Education Secretary K. Ganesan said there were 1.3 million students pursuing higher education in Tamil Nadu, but the enrolment in the Red Ribbon Clubs was only 35,000. Efforts should be taken to increase this to at least 1.3 lakh students.

Health Secretary V.K. Subburaj said the clubs hoped to reach 18 lakh children in schools and 15 lakh children out of schools, in addition to 55 lakh self-help group members.

The clubs would bring young people face to face with HIV and provide them a complete understanding of the disease leading to removal of stigma, Supriya Sahu, project director, TNSACS, said.

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