'Immoral, insensitive' AIDS ads shock Mumbai

For over two months, a series of AIDS awareness posters across the city has shocked authorities, as well as social workers, women's groups and ordinary people for their insensitivity to the victims of this disease, and for their strong bias against women.

The authorities have taken over two weeks to react to the posters, unable to guess what the NGO, Population Services Inter-national, was going to say in its next poster as part of its "mysterious awareness campaign".

Maharashtra Health Minister Digvijay Khanvilkar ordered a bureaucrat to look into the complaints on Friday,.

Dr I.S. Gilada, People's Health Organisation (PHO) says, "The PHO's initiative to ban the controversial 'Balbir Pasha' campaign received a shot-in-the-arm when the Maharashtra government ordered an inquiry into the campaign and its perpetrator, the PSI which is a U.S.-based multi-national corporate body that markets condoms and the birth control pill."

It all started on World AIDS Day 2002, about two months back, when people started noticing the first of the ads which said, "Balbir Pasha ko AIDS hoga kya?" (Will Balbir Pasha get AIDS?).

As the question came across TV, radio, newspapers, bill boards and on walls across city, the public became curious for the second phase which stated "Balbir Pasha sharab ke nashe mein condom lagana bhool jata hoga. Ek baar bhi condom na lagaane se AIDS ho sakta hai!"(Balbir Pasha may have forgotten to use the condom under the influence of alcohol. You'll get AIDS even if not used once).

The U.S.-sponsored big budget advertisement campaign's current advertisement reads, "Balbir Pasha ko AIDS ho gaya kaise" (How did Balbir Pasha get AIDS) followed by a markedly anti women ad that names Pasha's partner as 'Manjula'.

The NGO states that the idea of such ads is to make people talk about AIDS and from that point of view the NGO has succeeded in its campaign. "Following these ads, I started getting a lot of complaints and even queries from those who were infected with AIDS and those not concerned with it," says Gilada who has been working with AIDS victims for several years.

"Some of the myths and misinformation perpetrated from this campaign are that AIDS is transmitted only from a woman to man and that only those consuming alcohol can get AIDS. The ads also send a message that even faithful partners not using a condom in their conjugal relationship can get AIDS and that it is transmitted only through sex. It erroneously informs people that an infected person gets AIDS directly (without getting HIV) and ignores the vital fact that what is transmitted through unsafe sex is HIV, and that AIDS comes after several years as a last stage of HIV disease."

Even the mention of the name Manjula could be a nightmare for girls with that name since they could become objects of ridicule, he says.

Describing it as an immoral and insensitive campaign, the ads, instead of creating awareness has done more harm than good says Gilada.