Excerpts from, Doe Nair’s speech at the World Forum Foundation – Kuala Lumpur, May 2007

Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE)

(As a powerful tool to combat HIV/AIDS in India).

Understanding ECCE. ECCE and India

Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen permit me to take you away from the continent of AFRICA to India, my country. 

I am Doe Nair and my organization, WOMEN’S ACTION GROUP CHELSEA works in seven selected slums of North East Delhi, India. These slums have a population of nearly 300,000 people, who are migrant, mobile, poor, illiterate and uneducated. 

CHELSEA is an acronym: Children, Health, Education, Ladies, Senior Citizens, Environment, Awareness. If we secure these areas we will be in a position to provide a Safe and Secure space for our children. 

We have been providing services to People Living with HIV/AIDS (PLHA) in the seven selected slums of N E Delhi for the last five years.

The Services provided are: 

Treatment and management of Opportunistic Infections in PLHA. (Man, Woman or Child).

Treatment management and adherence to treatment specially ARV.

Nutrition and Nutrition education.

Psychosocial support through counseling and Life skills Education with children.

Vocational and recreational support to children and Rehabilitation of adults.

India as you all know is a vast country with many languages, dialects, religions, castes and communities. It is the world’s largest democracy. The population of over 1 billion continues to grow at an alarming rate. I am told that a child is born every minute so at the end of my ten-minute talk there’ll be ten new Indians born! It is a cause for alarm, for future food security and more alarming is the fact that these children are born into poor, uneducated, illiterate families. The reason given by the poor is that children will secure their old age, meaning the children will look after the parents in their old age.

Poverty as you so well know spawns its own “evil” forcing the poor into Risk Behaviour which exposes them to HIV/AIDS. Fortunately for us in India, though we have the highest number of HIV Infected people in the World this because of our huge numbers, the percentage of HIV infection is well below 1% and we intend to keep it that way if not reverse the trend.

We, in India have the full support of the Government of India at the centre and at the state levels. The Government of India recognizes HIV as a community health problem and has set up The National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) to combat HIV. NACO in turn has State AIDS Control Societies (SACS) at the State level.

The Government of India is perhaps the only country in the world which is providing FREE Anti Retroviral Treatment (ARV) for life to adults and children. The Pediatric dose comes through the Clinton Foundation which has pledged to provide the pediatric dose to every child in the world. Five of our children, the WAG CHELSEA children were the very first children in the world to get the FREE Pediatric Dose on November 30, 2006 from Mr. Clinton and Mrs Sonia Gandhi themselves. We are very proud of this fact.

We are also proud of the fact that the very PLHA who received The Government of Indias FREE ARV Roll out in 2005 were also our patients, just seven of them.

The Government of India is also providing FREE clinical tests for HIV to check physical status of the patient and Free medication for the management of Opportunistic Infections in PLHA. But, and there is always a BUT, these facilities exist in metro cities, towns and satellite towns, theses facilities have not reached people in the rural areas, many of which in India are still not accessible by road. We are working at getting these facilities to far flung areas and hope to get there soon.

With the Government of India committed to combating HIV what is the contribution of the People of India towards our fight against HIV? Unfortunately, the answer is Zilch.

The people of India have to learn to lead Responsible lives. Start becoming responsible for their own health. While the children are being taught to have responsible responses to situations through various interventions the adults are oblivious of Responsible behaviour.

Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) starts with the parenting both mother and father are taught how to look after each other and stay healthy so that the child to come enters a safe and secure environment. It focuses on the parents, the child and early childhood years thereby empowering the child with “good values” and the ability to say “no”. This intervention has been tested and proved in many countries in Africa and I plead with all countries like mine, in the early stages of the HIV infection to implements ECCE at all levels of society. The beauty of ECCE is that it does not have a prerequisite of literacy; it requires a parent, not necessarily the biological parent, a child and a heart.

In India we use Behaviour Change Communication (BCC) Interventions only at the age of thirteen/fourteen. By then the child has already formed very rigid views on what it wants to do and not do. Saying this is right and wrong bounces off them and they tend to think their lives are being “regulated” and no teenager likes to be regulated!

Also, the BCC intervention has a narrow focus, touching mainly on “sex” education. In India that gave the world the Kama Sutra and elevated consensual sex to an art form as seen in the temples of central and southern India, the word “sex” has found many adversaries amongst the people of India, sadly, mine is a country of contradictions, with the result, sex education has been removed from the syllabus of schools in some states. They believe that this education will lead their children “astray” and not empower them to lead “responsible lives”.ECCE goes beyond sex and would appeal to the sensibilities of all concerned. I therefore, once again appeal to the Government of India and other countries to implement and make a commitment to implement ECCE at all levels of society.

Take ECCE to the communities. It is our best tool to combat HIV/AIDS. Let us secure the future of our children and give them a healthy and safe environment.

Thank you all.