AP Features, June 29th, 2007
India needs a high-profile campaigner to promote safe sex in its fight against AIDS, as Thailand had in the 1990s with a senator who became known as Mr. Condom, a top official was quoted as saying Friday.
Mechai Viravaidya, a former Cabinet minister in Thailand, emerged as an AIDS-fighting crusader in the '90s with an aggressive campaign to distribute condoms and educate the Thai public about HIV, helping to significantly cut that country's infection rate.
K. Sujatha Rao, the head of India's National AIDS Control Program told The Times of India newspaper, that India needs a similar figure.
"We are very serious about finding India's very own Mr. Condom," Rao was quoted as saying.
"He has to have a dynamic personality to change both government policy and public perceptions about HIV, AIDS, sex and condoms," Rao told the newspaper. "Most of India's AIDS epidemic is caused by sex and not infected blood transfusion."
India, a conservative country where even talking about sex is considered taboo, has faced enormous challenges in promoting condom use and safe sex.
UNAIDS said in data released last year that the country had the highest HIV infections in the world at 5.7 million.
Rao also told the newspaper that India's AIDS control program would recruit graduates from the country's top management schools to help devise strategies for promoting safe sex in the country.
In Thailand, Mechai's award-winning campaigning included visiting notorious nightspots to hand out condoms and holding contests to see who could blow condom-shaped balloons the fastest.
