Concerned with continuing discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS, the government is planning to introduce legislation that will penalise anyone found guilty of discrimination, including doctors, corporate establishments and schools and colleges.

NACO says it is streamlining interventions and weeding out ineffective organisations in order to stick to the objectives of the new AIDS policy which includes expanding the focus to include truckers and migrant workers.

In a significant, albeit token gesture, the impoverished eastern Indian state becomes perhaps the first state to offer monthly benefits of this nature to people living with HIV/AIDS.

Women in this study however had better knowledge of HIV than women in an earlier 2001 Indian census sample. They were much more likely to have heard of HIV, to be aware of condoms, to know that consistent condom use is an effective way of preventing HIV, and to know that HIV can be transmitted through contact with infected blood.

The specially designed seven-coach train, which will cover a staggering 27,000 km, stopping at 180 stations where volunteers on board will hold awareness programmes and activities in an estimated 50,000 villages, was flagged off at New Delhi railway station earlier this month.

Nearly 2,000 patients are expected to benefit from the free treatment in its first phase.

Conducted by the US-based MAC AIDS Fund, in nine countries across four continents, this latest study finds that prejudice, fear and stigma continue to exclude people living with AIDS from the mainstream.

The state with one of the most aggressive HIV/AIDS testing programmes launches an initiative to take testing and counselling facilities to areas where access has previously been poor. Tribal populations in remote areas, migrant and daily wage labourers, women and residents of urban slums are key targets of this service.

The United Nations has reduced its global estimate of the number of people infected with HIV/AIDS from nearly 40 million in 2006 to 33 million this year, saying a major reassessment of HIV prevalence in India accounts for much of the decrease.

New evidence from India’s third and most comprehensive health survey to date has spurred the government and international agencies like UNAIDS and the WHO to reduce the official estimate of Indians living with HIV by up to 50%