Critics of Indias World Bank-funded National AIDS Control Organization (NACO) are finding a
powerful ally in the countrys Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG),
which has taken the organization to task for poor utilization of millions
of dollars worth of funds meant for containing the HIV epidemic, writes
Inter Press Service Tuesday.
In a performance appraisal presented to Parliament on July 13, and
publicly made available this week, the CAG revealed that the NACO was only
able to utilize 46 percent of the more than 300 million dollars made available to
it for the second phase of a national AIDS control program (NACP-II) which
completes its five-year term in October. It also acknowledges alarming
trends such as increasing prevalence among antenatal women and has called
for tighter implementation and monitoring of the national AIDS program.
While the World Bank provides most of the funding for the NACOs programs,
channeled through the Bank-affiliated International Development
Association, other major contributors include the British governments
Department for International Development (DFID) and the United States
Agency for International Development (AID).
Promotion of condom use, considered the single most important intervention
in India where nearly 85 percent of HIV infections were attributed to
sexual transmission, seems to have shown maximum failure. The National
AIDS Control Organization has repeatedly stressed the importance of
condoms and allocated substantial funds for its promotion from 1992
onwards, when the first phase of the NACP was set in motion with 84
million dollars worth of World Bank credit. But the organization has had little
success in getting Indians to accept condom use. Free condom distribution
by various State AIDS Control Societies, which function at the provincial
level and draw funds from the NACO, increased from 52 million pieces in
1999 to over 90 million pieces in 2003. Accessibility to the prophylactic,
which doubles as a birth control device in this country of over a billion
people, however, remains abysmal.
Kilde: World Bank Press Review
