Siliguri, April 8: After 16 years of work under the National AIDS Control Programme (NACP) and spending up to Rs 3,000 crore on it, 20 per cent of the country’s population still does not know what HIV/AIDS is and how the disease spreads.

“From this, one can gauge the huge task before us and the reason why 75 per cent of the funds under NACP will be spent on prevention measures,” Union health minister Anbumani Ramadoss said here today. “Of this population, 600 million youths will have to get priority to be protected from HIV.”

Ramadoss also said a “national-level centralised medical institution” would be coming up in north Bengal. “We shall make the formal announcement after the panchayat elections.”

He was speaking at a meeting to discuss measures to curb increasing levels of trafficking and HIV — two menaces affecting the tea gardens of the region. The programme was organised by National Media Coalition and the Eastern Himalayas Regional Network against Gender-based Violence, Trafficking and HIV.

Attended by several stakeholders from north Bengal and the Northeast states, including government officials, civil society organisations and HIV positive persons’ networks, the meeting heard various problems faced by HIV-infected persons and suggestions by NGOs for better intervention methods.

“We are facing problems in accessing anti-retroviral therapy (ART) as we have to come all the way to North Bengal Medical College and Hospital for treatment and medication,” said Polsen Lama, a member of Shankar Foundation, a network of HIV positive persons in Darjeeling town.

The minister said a draft act has been prepared against stigma and discrimination faced by AIDS patients and was most likely to be introduced in Parliament in the monsoon session. The meeting adopted a Siliguri charter, the recommendations of which will be taken up in Delhi.