For the next 50 days folk artistes will fan out to various parts of the district spreading AIDS awareness.
They started their journey at a function organised here on Saturday. Collector M. Karunagaran flagged off the artistes’ visit to rural areas.
According to District Programme Manager, District AIDS Prevention and Control Unit, B. Mohamed Ali, the artistes will travel to all the rural areas in the district and also towns and Coimbatore city.
Two teams of artistes will perform two programmes each a day.
A programme will be for an hour.
The Tamil Nadu State AIDS Control Society selected the artistes and sent them to Coimbatore and the other 15 districts, where the awareness programmes will be held in the first phase.
The artistes will stage karagam, uyil karagam, lavani, natakam and render gramiya padal conveying messages about blood donation, ICDS centres, ART centres, STI clinics besides HIV-TB.
The objective was to prevent new HIV incidence by 2013-14.
At the inauguration Collector Karunagaran said that after measures were taken by the State Government, the prevalence rate had come down from 1.3 to 0.25 in the district.
