Coordinated HIV/AIDS & STD Response through Capacity Building and Awareness (Charca)

This programme with a joint UN System partnership, aims to reduce vulnerability of young women by providing information, improving their skills and access to quality services.

Background

India has an estimated 3.86 million people in the country infected with HIV, an overall HIV adult prevalence rate of 0.8 per cent. Ten percent of the world's population of people with HIV is Indian. The overwhelming majority of these (89 per cent) are in the age group of 15-44 years. Women constitute 21.4 per cent of known AIDS cases in the country. India's epidemic is marked by heterogeneity - not a single epidemic but made up of a number of district epidemics, often co-existing in the same state. Driven primarily by heterosexual transmission, HIV infection is moving steadily beyond its initial focus among commercial sex workers and their clients, STD patients and Injecting Drug Users (IDUs), into the wider population.

There is a noted shift towards women and young people with an accompanying increase invertical transmission and pediatric HIV. Overall, vulnerabilities linked to lack of access to quality medical services, low access to information and medical care, high female illiteracy, overall lack of awareness, low age of marriage, limited control over fertility, economic dependence, illiteracy, lack of knowledge about HIV/STD and low overall use of STD treatment services, are contextual for the majority of women, not only the marginalized populations traditionally addressed by targeted interventions against HIV/AIDS. They mean that women have highly increased vulnerabilities to HIV/AIDS and reduced capacities to protect themselves from infection.

Objectives

This programme with a joint UN System partnership, was set up to reduce vulnerability of young women by providing information, improving their skills and access to quality services. It also aimed to build leadership, support networks and the necessary enabling environment. Through this process, the programme empowered women to protect themselves against HIV/STIs and realize their rights.

Strategy

The project strategy involved:

  • Awareness;
  • Building skills;
  • Improving services;
  • Building support structures; and
  • Creating enabling environment.