In a programme launched by the Chennai Corporation with help from the Tamil Nadu State AIDS Control Society (TANSACS) Wednesday, HIV/AIDS-related sex education would be introduced in 65 schools, the first such effort by a civic body in the country.

With this, 61,000 students in high schools would be introduced to awareness of the disease, which has infected 5.1 million people in the country.

The idea of taking the programme to the young came long ago, says S. Vijaykumar, TANSACS project director.

The innovative decision by the Chennai civic body came after successful completion of a two-year pilot project, conducted by TANSACS, AIDS Prevention and Control Society (APACS) and Unicef.

The pilot project, named "family life education" programme, covered 8,500 school students across the state.

"The pilot project began in 1995 and has been implemented very systematically in the last two years for Classes 10, 11 and 12," Vijaykumar says.

But TANSACS is not content with just going to schools.

"In the past two years, we have ensured that most of the babies born to 1,600 HIV positive mothers are free of HIV infection," informs Vijaykumar.

This has been done through 10 voluntary confidential counselling and testing centres for prevention of transmission from mother to child.

Besides, 600 art, science, and engineering colleges are under its AIDS education umbrella.

The increasing vulnerability of the girl child and the young woman in the 20-40 age group has also made TANSACS concentrate on women's self help groups (SHGs), with the organisation launching a massive awareness programmes using SHGS to target women and children and students.

Tamil Nadu had reported 24,667 cases of AIDS to the National AIDS Control Organisation by September 2003.

TANSACS' latest sentinel surveillance for HIV in this south Indian state has revealed that it accounts for 50 percent of all reported cases in the country.

--Indo-Asian News Service