Aug 21: In the third phase of National Aids Awareness, Indian government has now decided to choose a new medium of advertisement to cover more people especially young generation. It would be now the alternative media as this media is being more popular among the youths, confirmed NACO.
After getting the insufficient results, from conventional media, now the government has chosen Internet and mobiles to spread the awareness message against the deadly disease HIV and AIDS via emails and SMS alerts.
“Do you know your HIV status?” or “Have you got tested for HIV?”, these sort of millions of SMSes and mails would be sent from today, stated an official of NACO. As National AIDS Control Organisation, NACO is planning to motivate more and more people to get tested for HIV/AIDS by sending millions of SMSes and mails as a part of nationwide campaign.
“Only 13 per cent HIV-positive people in India know they are infected and despite free testing, only 4.2 million people have got tested last year. This multimedia campaign is designed to help us more than double the number of people seeking counseling and testing to 10 million by the end of the financial year,” added official.
Only 82,000 out of 2.47 million people, according to NACO figure have registered themselves to get free anti-retroviral treatment used to treat AIDS under the government programme, while more than that are still unknown weather they are HIV positive or Negative, as most of the people don’t want to go for checkups due to societal defame.
Till now NACO has focused only more conventional media like television, print ads, posters and street plays, but these could reached to satisfactory results. Now more than 50 million people are using mobile and at least 10 millions are using Internet, so by sending SMSes and email, NACO can cover more youth as the numbers of young mobile users are more than that of other categories.
The multimedia campaign will be primarily focused on colleges and Universities by sending SMSes and mails through Internet, cable and Satellite services. There are more chances to get awareness about their partners’ status whether they have gone under HIV test or not. They can feel free for HIV counseling, testing and treatment being offered under the National AIDS Programme.
Two months back NACO had launched the third phase of AIDS awareness campaign (NACP-3) worth Rs 11,585 crore budget to offer counseling and testing services to 42 million people by 2012.
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