Our Correspondent
Kohima | August 25
Minister for Health & Family Welfare Kuzholuzo Nienu today said Nagaland is in a very strategic position for HIV to thrive. This is due to the state’s proximity with the notorious Golden Triangle and sharing international borders with Myanmar, he said, where no infrastructure is in place for anti-HIV response.
“This is a need for inter-governmental and non-government response and collaboration across the Indo-Myanmar border and in rural areas for scaling up services for rural communities,” the minister said. He was addressing a donors and partners’ coordination meeting of the Nagaland State AIDS Control Society (NSACS) here today.
Nienu stressed on the need for a compressive cross-border HIV intervention and prevention check along the Indo-Myanmar border. It is a matter of concern that Nagaland marks the maximum number of drugs and contrabands seizures in the country. “This is one of the main contributing factors to the increasing Drug Injectors and Oral Drug Users in the state,” Nienu said. The minister urged the implementing partners to also feed the NSACS and the government with information on how illicit drugs are crossing borders and being distributed in the state. He also referred to Nagaland not having a medical college or nursing institution.
Nienu also maintained that the need for coordination and understanding from all project partners for timely implementation of projects is most crucial.
Therefore sudden discontinuation of projects and discontinuation without sustainable linkages for the project beneficiaries should not happen, he said adding that this will have negative impact not only on that particular project and its beneficiaries, but can snowball to the entire programme.
Referring to coordination meeting with the donors and partners, he congratulated the NSACS for initiating and organizing such important meeting and opined that such meeting continues once a year.
Earlier, highlighting state-specific concerns, Dr. Neiphi Kire, project director of NSACS said the epidemic of HIV/AIDS rages on with an adult HIV prevalence of 1.2%. Although the trend of HIV prevalence has shown a decline, Dimapur and Tuensang district remains high (Dimapur at ANC-2% IDU-5.2%.HSS 2007 and Tuensang ANC 5.6 % and IDU -2.8% (2007). Dimapur district contributes to more than 50% of the total HIV+ve detected (2009 -10: 48% & 2010 1st Qtr. 54.6%).
Dr. Kire also said that cross-border transmission of the infection from across the International boundary (Myanmar) and illicit drug trafficking are a major concern. The sexual route of transmission is 84% in Nagaland and Dimapur shares 88% in it, he added. Dimapur district contributes to more than 50% of the total HIV+ve detected it was informed.
