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Call for awareness about AIDS

— Photo: Lingaraj Panda

SPREADING THE MESSAGE: Citizens put in their signature at a campaign to mark the World AIDS Day in Berhampur on Monday.

KORAPUT: A woman from Semiliguda in Koraput district was infected with HIV after undergoing caesarean operation at Koraput.

When she was tested for the operation she had no sign of the infection. But after the operation she had to be administered a bottle of blood.

She took it from a professional donor who was in the window period of HIV infection and hence she had received the infection through his blood, Bharadwaj Mishra, CDMO, Koraput, said while attending a meeting organised by SOVA at Koraput on World AIDS Day on Monday.

While this story of an innocent woman moved the gathering, there was yet another experience of a women who had to commit suicide for the discrimination she had to face from the society.

A person, affected by HIV and a member of NKP+, narrated how a HIV-infected woman from Tikiri in Rayagada district was sent back at the health centres from Tikiri to Jeypore when she had approached the medicos for assisting her to deliver a child. Without any support from anywhere, she had committed suicide after giving birth to a dead child, Somnath said.

Awareness on HIV/AIDS was the only answer to such incidents, Dr. Mishra said. One should select people from the known persons with proven health record while taking blood rather than going for professional donors.

The situation of Koraput region in relation to HIV/AIDS was alarming and could well be managed by joining with the civil society organisations. While quoting the official data available with the VCTC at Koraput and Jeypore, he said there were 707 people infected with HIV in the district out of which 115 people had already breathed their last. However, the much-awaited ART centre to support the treatment of HIV patients would be opened in the district headquarters hospital at Koraput in the mid week of this month with the assistance from BILT.

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