Gates Foundation overview and global health initiatives

Gates Foundation

India is a developing country. However, given its large population, there has been increasing risk of HIV epidemic in the country. Although the size of adult population affected through HIV is relatively low, but the rate of the infection is spreading rapidly across the country. Despite the increasing economic level of the common people, a large part of the country in the remote areas still lacks access to the HIV prevention information and related preventive measures. The biggest challenge that India is facing is that its most of the high-risk population is often dispersed in several local areas and majority of these people are mobile, i.e., truck-drivers. The final problem is that in India, HIV is considered as a stigma. Therefore, instead of making HIV information openly discussed, the patients often keep it hidden, allowing its spread unchecked.

Seeing the large population of India, the total annual fund to fight HIV / AIDS is only $146 million, while a fully funded prevention and care program requires about $1 billion a year.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has made a contribution in this regard by committing $200 million to prevent the spread of HIV in India, through Avahan. The main aim of Avahan's prevention programs is to educate those, who are most at risk of contracting and spreading HIV. Avahan is expanding access to proven HIV prevention programs by educating people on the behavior change and condom promotion programs to reduce HIV transmission among high-risk behavior groups, such as sex workers, truckers and injection drug users. Second, Avahan is empowering these high-risk groups to participate in and lead HIV prevention efforts, and finally Avahan is making efforts in treatment of sexually transmitted infections, which are likley to increase the risk of HIV transmission. In addition the program is also making efforts for information access, research collaboration, and impact measurement of the treatment efforts.