Out of seminar closet, LU starts HIV course

Enough of seminars and HIV/AIDS awareness programmes. The Lucknow University's Social Work department now offers a one-year post-graduate diploma in HIV/AIDS and Family Life Education.

The course starts this July, for the 2007-08 academic session, university officials said.

"Apart from spreading HIV/AIDS awareness, our diploma would focus on counselling HIV/AIDS-afflicted persons," course coordinator Dr D K Singh said. "If we talk about Uttar Pradesh, there has been not been any special emphasis on holding counselling sessions for HIV/AIDS (afflicted persons)."

He said the idea is to prepare students to meet this "global challenge" head on, rather than "just confining ourselves to the usual seminars and programmes."
Singh said the course has got all necessary approvals from the university administration. "All preparations have been made. We have decided to admit 60 students in the PG diploma initially. But we might increase the seats if we get a good response from the students."

University officials said the PG diploma progarmme would enable students to conduct surveys to assess ground realities about HIV/AIDS awareness programmes. "Despite many such programmes launched in various parts of the state, the awareness level has not risen in the same proportion," a university official said. "So our surveys would ascertain real awareness levels about HIV/AIDS, which in turn would help bring out the loopholes in these awareness programmes."

Singh said the Social Work department has already made a list of areas with HIV/AIDS ratio. "Our students would visit these localities to conduct survey as part of the course's practical session," he said. "Based on results of the survey, students would design new HIV/AIDS awareness programmes.

"These programmes would put special emphasis on the affected population's literacy level, family background, profession and such details."

Faculty members of the Social Work department said the university has tied up with several NGOs dealing with HIV/AIDS issues to make the training more substantial. "The assistance would strengthen our training programmes," a faculty member said. "Several NGOs have agreed to provide us their data on HIV/AIDS studies, and such statistics would be of immense help for students who would visit far-flung areas."