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India gets star treatment to battle AIDS
With Dravid pitching in, celebrity appeal will have a greater impact on the campaign against AIDS.
India is getting the star treatment in an effort to halt an HIV/AIDS epidemic that experts fear could vault it over South Africa as the world's top infected country.
Just as Princess Diana and US basketball legend Magic Johnson lifted the profile of the incurable illness, actor Richard Gere is hoping celebrity appeal will have the same impact in India -- where an estimated 5.1 million people are already living with HIV/AIDS and new infections are rising fast.
If pop stars and athletes can pump up sales of everything from soft drinks and sports equipment to designer watches, Gere believes celebrity endorsement of safe sex could halt what experts say could be a catastrophe, if current rates rise in the nation of more than a billion people.
"It can be stopped now. There is a window of opportunity to do the work now," Gere told an international AIDS conference.
When the Hollywood star and his foundation started the initiative three years ago, they looked at HIV/AIDS as a product and asked: "How do we sell a product, in terms of what is the disease? How do you get it and how do you protect yourself from it?"
The answer was a media campaign, including slick, short public service announcements with Indian cricket star Rahul Dravid advising people to be safe and use condoms.
"The basic model is using celebrities, in a broad sense, or culturally iconic people -- actors, athletes, musicians, dancers, people who reflect modern society and can speak directly and very quickly to modern society," Gere said.
Use a condom or get lost
India has the largest number of people living with HIV/AIDS outside South Africa. Knowledge about the illness in the densely populated nation is still scant and sex is the main mode of transmission. Ninety per cent of people in India who are infected don't know it.
Like sub-Saharan Africa, women are at the receiving end of the illness and bear the brunt of its impact.
Dr Suniti Solomon, who runs the private YR Gaitonde Centre for AIDS Research and Education, told the 15th International AIDS Conference that 80 per cent of the women she is taking care of have a single sexual partner -- their husband.
She agrees with government policy that prevention should be targeted at high-risk groups, particularly sex workers.
"I think they are much more empowered today than the housewife in India. A sexual worker can tell a client 'use a condom or get lost' but a housewife can never do that in India, so they need to be empowered," she said.
Millions of Indians are now seeing Dravid's public service announcements during a three-year programme brokered with Star Television, while activist groups and charitable foundation work the grass roots to get the condom message across to men.
"This train is in motion," said Gere.
He added, "The hope is now that the new leadership, which has been talking about AIDS, which is not afraid of the subject and has demonstrated commitment, will be a true partner in the eradication of HIV/AIDS."
