My goal is to help create the infrastructure and tools for delivery of health and education to all people, particularly those in developing countries. This infrastructure should be developed with the capacity and resilience to prevent [re]occurance of global pandemics like HIV/AIDS, and to eliminate the continued presence of large fractions of the population without basic human rights like clean water, food, shelter, education, and health care. I envision a bottoms up approach with local organizations assuming ownership and responsibility. Such an infrastructure, and the transition to good governance with robust economies and an unalienable value for human life, should largely be in place by 2020 to prevent the projected suffering and death that will be unprecedented even by today's cost -- 65 million deaths due to HIV/AIDS alone.
To spread awareness about HIV/AIDS and other societal issues and problems amongst school students. To implement programs that empower these students to develop healthy habits and to become agents of change. I am implementing a version by visiting India twice a year for three weeks each time. As a result, on August 28, 2001 ten schools from Chandigarh, Delhi, Jaipur, and Ludhiana participated in the first North India Multimedia Presentation Contest and through it spread awareness on societal issues.
To help develop a consensus in the Public Health community, foundations working on humanitarian and developmental issues, and relief organizations that basic education and health care should be maintained as priorities irrespective of other programs. These should receive long term sustained funding. Particular emphasis should be placed in developing and maintaining the human resource -- teachers and health workers.
To help develop a consensus amongst the industrialists, public and private officials, and top bureaucrats in India that basic education and health care are essential for developing the human resource necessary to compete in the 21 century and for dealing with many of the societal issues; and without an educated and enlightened public, no nation will achieve good governance. To overcome hurdles of corruption and poor governance there has to be sustained and additional investment by both the public and private sectors in these areas and the two should work cooperatively to support and fund local organizations so that they can assume ownership and responsibility and develop successful programs.
To develop an audio-visual educational curriculum on health, environment, sexuality, lifeskills, and good governance that can be implemented in schools and communicated through mass media to educate all people, literate and illiterate. The advantage of visual learning are that it transcends barriers of race, sex, literacy, language, religion, and spreads awareness quickly. I am currently developing such a curriculum and have made significant progress towards a first draft.
I am a theoretical physicist working at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and my family and I are settled in the US. My involvement with helping to mitigate the HIV/AIDS situation in India began during a family visit to India in December 1998. The lack of knowledge about the many infectious diseases, in particular about HIV/AIDS, and the inability of the health system to provide decent care finally opened my eyes to the hard life of a common man and a bleak future for all. HIV/AIDS, HEPATITIS B and C, TB, and Malaria are rampant throughout India and growing. These diseases combined with malnutrition and diarrheal and respiratory diseases constitute a multifaced health pandemic not just in India but in a large part of the developing world -- a world we now call ONE. The Indian government is aware of the situation (official government figures of HIV infections, announced by NACO in NOV 1999, are 3.5 million people infected and a doubling time of possibly 2-3 years) and is doing what it can, and yet hardly making a dent in controlling the spread. Each of these diseases claims the lives of millions of Indians every year and deserve attention and resources.
I have choosen, in part, to concentrate on HIV/AIDS because it is unique in many ways: it has no cure or vaccine, is sexually transmitted, and its spread is fueled by societal problems. Taboos and denial have simultaneously created social fear and further denial. HIV is killing the most productive segment of society, and because it has the potential to mushroom into a giant killing machine as has happened in Sub-Saharan Africa. Nevertheless, with time it has become clear to me that the root causes for all such health pandemics are common, as are the solutions. The only hope of curbing the spread, at least until there is a vaccine and maybe not even then as experience with Hepatitis B is showing, is through a massive educational and awareness campaign. We need to provide basic information on health and hygiene to the entire world population, literacy and empowerment of women, and the political will of all governments to make these issues a national priority. In this effort, I believe, every human being can help by devoting some fraction of their time and resources to their favorite cause, for in the end what helps solve one problem will help solve all. So if someone does not like my emphasis on HIV/AIDS, read TB or Hepatitis or air pollution or your favorite cause in its place. What is not important is the specific disease or environmental concern, but the realization that all these problems are linked and only by joining hands and doing something together can we stop the spread of the various deadly diseases and clean up the environment globally. Each one of us will be doing this for our children. A global urgency exits and affects all of us, irrespective of the country we choose to live in.
I believe that stopping the spread will require both a grass-root movement and direct intervention by the Prime Minister. With respect to the grass-root movement I am pursuing, through lectures and forming core groups, involvement of schools, colleges, and industry in India. The real work is being done by local organizations; I act as a motivator. On the government front I am trying to convince as many friends and colleagues, who now are senior bureaucrats, that the health pandemics in India are very serious and pose a very real threat to stability and national security. Hopefully, persistence, time, and delivery of the same message from many concerned activists, will result in the message reaching the PM, convincing him of the urgency, and precipitating action. Lastly, to reach school and college students and educate them on social issues, I am developing a year long non-credit course on Health, Environment, Sexuality, and life skills. This information based course is being developed in collaboration with Vasant Valley School, New Delhi, and will be made available, free, to schools and colleges. The goal is to allow any individual with a PC to access it and play with it just like a computer learning game. A short description of each activity is given below.
Motivating friends, relatives, and associates to become active in spreading awareness of the severe medical, social, and political consequences of HIV/AIDS. Promoting an understanding of risks for various social and economic groups in India, and why all socio-economic groups should be concerned. Emphasize why intervention work should focus on the most vulnerable and maginalized. Of particular concern is the risk of infection amongst industrial workers. This aspect of my work is being done partly via e-mail and telephone calls to people in India, and partly by regular visits every 3-4 months to give lectures.
Through the efforts of associates, who are school and college principles, organize lectures for students, teachers, parents, and Non Government Organizations on diseases with an emphasis on HIV/AIDS. I will continue to deliver some of these lectures during visits to India (2-3 times a year), of which the first was in March 99, and the next in Sept 99. Also, during my visits I will provide information and training to teachers to develop and sustain a continuous effort. At present, the three institutions hosting my efforts are: Dayanand Medical College and Hospital in Ludhiana (a 1100 bed hospital ranked high amongst the best in Punjab), Hero-Honda Group of industries and CII(Northern India), and Vasent Valley School in New Delhi.
The severe health pandemics and environmental degradation in India are a consequence of a number of interconnected social problems like poverty, illiteracy, lack of women's rights at home and in society, etc.. To help promote an understanding of these various problems and their interconnections, I am developing a course on Diseases, Environment, and Sexuality. The hope is that such a non-credit course will be adopted by schools and colleges and will raise general awareness. In time, as these student grow into positions of responsiblity, they can communicate this knowledge to a much wider audience and translate ideas into policy.
In the process of learning about HIV/AIDS, I set up a WEB site with links to useful sources of information and a log of my activities. Its URL is http://t8web.lanl.gov/people/rajan/AIDS-india/.
The course mentioned above is being developed on an IBM PC running Windows 98 with Microsoft Powerpoint 97. This choice was made because PC's running Windows is the predominant computer setup in Indian homes, schools, and institutions. The course consists of a set of folders with information and the entire collection is available on a CD. I am now working with schools to develop this into multimedia presentations
A brief description of the current status of course development is as follows:
This course explores various areas of our life that impacts our social welfare and individual pursuit of happiness. It discusses
with emphasis on providing information, especially in making people aware of the world, Indian, and US situation in each.
For each disease considered I explore the following aspects
So far I have collected information on the following diseases