The Odisha State AIDS Control Society (OSACS) has advised HIV screening of all migrant workers returning to the State because of the COVID-19 pandemic .
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OSACS has written to the chief functionaries of 48 NGOs in Odisha involved in Targeted Intervention (TI) against HIV, and six Link Workers Schemes (LWS), to take up HIV screening of all returnees in coordination with local Integrated Counselling and Testing Centres (ICTC). According to the letter from OSACS, around 10 lakh migrant workers are expected to return to the State and remain in quarantine.
Odisha is now showing a declining trend in HIV infections. To strengthen the continuing fight against AIDS, the present situation of documented return of migrant labourers and their institutional quarantine is being seen as a tool to fight HIV.
Challenges ahead
According to social activists involved in the prevention of AIDS and HIV infection in Odisha, although this screening can be a major step to check HIV infections in the State, it is a difficult task to perform in districts like Ganjam, where over 40,000 migrant workers have already returned to be quarantined.
Extra precautions needed to avoid the spread of COVID-19 are a major stumbling block in collecting blood samples for rapid HIV testing of all returnees. Activists feel HIV screening may be possible in districts that have a smaller number of returnees.
But Ganjam is the most HIV- prone district in Odisha because of its large number of migrant workers. Of the HIV+ persons in Odisha, 36% are from Ganjam, with prevalence higher among migrant workers employed in Gujarat’s Surat. The Association for Rural Upliftment and National Allegiance (ARUNA), involved in the implementation of TI and LWS in Ganjam, felt HIV screening can be taken up through doorstep visits after returnees got back to their homes from the institutional quarantine centres.
Manpower shortage
Lokanath Mishra, management committee member in ARUNA, said there was a dearth of manpower to take up HIV screening of returnees at quarantine centres. “As per our present manpower, one person will have to take blood samples of over 1,000 returnees, which increases risk of getting infected,” said Mr. Mishra. According to him, information on all quarantined returnees can be collected for their doorstep HIV screening when they return back to their homes from quarantine centres.
