Celebration of World AIDS Day 2024

S.B. Devi Charity Home

Like every year S. B. Devi Charity Home (SBDCH) organized an awareness programme for the Commercial Sex Workers (CSWs) of Sonagachi, Red light area.

The main motive is to educate the CSWs about HIV/AIDS, its causes, symptoms, spreading and precautionary measures. This event was celebrated on 02.12.2024 as 01.12.2024 was Sunday. This programme was celebrated in the project building of SBDCH.

The theme of the Year 2024 World AIDS Day is “take the rights path :my health, my right” which highlights the significance of human rights promotion and protection approach in addressing issues of discrimination, stigma, prejudice and limitations/inequalities in prevention, testing, accessing treatment and health services by people living with HIV/AIDS and those at risk.

The program was conducted in two parts-

  • Assessment of Sex Workers’  knowledge on HIV/AIDS about the disease, its spread and myths  through structured questionnaire
  • Giving them knowledge about the disease.

This time our field workers gathered many new participants and we were thrilled to learn about their inadequate knowledge about HIV/ AIDS.

The entire programme was conducted by Dr. Bikas Basu, The Monitor of Public Health in Prostitute Area. Inaugural speech was given by our General Secretary Mr. Sekhar Chattopadhyay. This was followed by a speech on Life style modification by Sanjana Mullick, Jr. Admin.  Dr. Gitali Roy Mitra gave them a brief knowledge about HIV and its spread through PowerPoint presentation. She discussed about its transmission, three stages of HIV-acute, chronic & AIDS, Symptoms, Myths and precautionary measures.  Our only motto is to guide our beneficiaries about the disease and promote to use Condoms and spread their knowledge as much as possible.

The feedback of assessment was given by the three interviewers -Moumi Chakraborty, Sonali Mukherjee and Sumita Basak. There were also three prizes allotted for participants who could answer the questions in the assessment part.

Overall it was an informative programme.

We also thank Inner Wheel Club of North Calcutta for being a part of our programme.

We distributed free condoms (200 pieces to each) to all the participants along with food packets. Total participants were 50, Staff members of SBDCH was 22 and Guests 3.