Minnesota Group Raising Funds To Start AIDS Clinic In Imphal, India

India is the next AIDS time bomb waiting to explode.

    (PRWEB) September 13, 2003 -- India is the next AIDS time bomb waiting to explode. It has the second-highest HIV-positive population in the world after South Africa, with an official tally of 3.5 million HIV-positive residents and an unofficial count of closer to 5 million. PlanetAide, a Minnesota-based organization that trains and provides resources to doctors treating HIV/AIDS in developing countries, has a goal of raising $125,000 to establish and operate an AIDS treatment center in Imphal, Manipur, India. The centerpiece of the fundraising campaign will be A Benefit For Imphal" on September 20.

Imphal, located in northeast India, has an HIV-positive population of 100,000, due mainly to the high rate of intravenous drug use in the region. Manipur borders on Myannmar, part of the golden triangle" of Laos, Myannmar and Thailand, which produces twenty per cent of the worlds heroin supply. The heroin supply route through northeastern India has created more than 200,000 IV drug users in the region of 38 million people.

According to Jack O. Weatherford, executive director of PlanetAide, Imphal, a city about the size of the twin cities, faces an HIV/AIDS population three times larger than the total HIV population in the entire state of Minnesota. AIDS still carries an enormous stigma in India, and the additional disgrace of IV drug use makes it especially hard to get funding and recruit health care professionals to treat these people. Imphal direly needs all of the help we can give it to fight AIDS."

The highlight of the fundraiser, which includes an appeal to local churches and synagogues, will be a party on September 20 at 1200 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 7:00 -- 11:00 p.m. Entertainment will be provided by Rita Mustaphis Katha Dance Theatre and jazz singer Aaron Keith Stewart. For additional information about the fundraiser call 612-333-6003 or visit www.planetaide.org. Tax-deductible donations to the Imphal treatment center can be sent to PlanetAide at 3010 Hennepin Avenue South, Ste. 176, Minneapolis, MN 55408.

            According to Weatherford, Until PlanetAide took on this project, HIV-positive residents of Imphal had virtually no support. The funds that we are raising can help the community reduce the rising death toll, not only among IV drug users, but among the general population as HIV/AIDS spreads inevitably to the partners and children of infected drug users. This is a community that already experiences poverty unparalleled in the United States. Without aid, the community, including massive numbers of orphaned children, will face incomprehensible devastation."