Alternative for India Development (AID) started a campaign in cross border of  Jharkhand, Orissa and West Bengal under the Cross Border STD/HIV/AIDS prevention and Control Program to make rural people aware of their rights and help establish linkages with the state's machinery so that the health delivery system begins to respond to the needs of villagers.
 

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The HIV epidemic has brought into focus numerous public health issues facing rural population today. In this respect, it presents us with an opportunity to deal with issues that have been neglected and even been actively ignored for too long.

Mouli wouldn’t believe her ears at all. The villages gossiped about HIV being the cause of her husband's death. After AID’s Mobile campaign unit organized a program in her village she decided.......>>more

During one of AID’s HIV/AIDS interventions we came across Madhu, a 26 year old unmarried youth who remarked that most of his migrant co-workers visit brothels in Mumbai........>>more

AID team met Sony, a mobile sex worker who caters to the needs of the truckers plying along the National Highway-6, one of the busiest routes of southeast corridor........>>more

The country is in the process of setting up testing facilities at the Block level, but will this bring testing to the doorstep of the rural population? And how long will it take to implement this ambitious program? The longer it stretches the number of ‘Mouli’s, Madhu’s and Sony’s will increase in leaps and bounds hitting harshly the rural poor by pushing them towards realms of poverty.

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Women are most active in their complaints. Women in the project region informed that the PHC did not open and if it was open the staff did not attend to them. These rural women have now clearly understood the role of the ANM’s in their lives and wanted them to come and live in their villages. They did all they could to cajole the ANMs to become a part of their village.
These complaints were documented and put forward by AID at the Block and District Level Task Force Meeting (BLTF and DLTF). The DC and District Civil Surgeon gave a patient hearing to the complaints where community representatives detailed about their problem in the meetings.
The government responded and the PHC started functioning!!!

The District Health Office supported the move and also pressurized the ANMs to take their job more seriously. This could only be achieved by sustained efforts and dialogue between rural women and the service providers.
Our long drawn campaign has helped at least some women to consider the importance of their own sexual health, to look around for medical assistance, to assert their right to procure services from health care providers and to pressure the state machinery to get the health service providers to do their job with a degree of seriousness.
The movement to assert Right to Health has spread to the nearby block. It is now widely understood that the ANMs have to serve 5000 women. It is only when all our PHCs start functioning efficiently that timely assistance from trained personnel is likely to bring down the prevailing high incidence of STI, TB and other communicable disease in the Block.