Itanagar:
It was a first-ever conference for men in uniform in the country to spread awareness about AIDS where members of the Arunachal Police were shown a film on the dreaded disease.
The conference, held on July 1, featured a short film entitled
Sabdhan, which was produced jointly by Border Security Force (BSF) and UNAIDS.
The film depicts how a BSF doctor brought back hope to a brave jawan who unknowingly acquired HIV infection during his long stay away from home.
The jawan, who learnt about his infection during a test just before he was about to donate blood to a colleague injured seriously in a daring ambush by a group of armed militants, got worried about his expecting wife in village home.
However, he became happy on learning from a BSF doctor that everything was not lost for him. There are medicines available now which when taken during pregnancy by the wife and the child after delivery could save his child.
Along with workshops, press advertisements and other forms of publicity to spread AIDS control messages, the Union Home Ministry is organising such conferences at regional and national levels to reach out to 26 lakh policemen in every part of the country.
Dwivedi said at the conference that efforts were on to make the policemen a medium for propagation of the country's new strategy to fight HIV/AIDS with more focus on behavioural change along with creating awareness about little steps that could prevent spread of dreaded disease and save lives through timely intervention as the BSF jawan in the film did.