End AIDS India

Lately, India is caught up in reacting with ‘ban Karo’ to anything and everything that remotely hurts our pride or disrupts our viewpoints. Ban on certain websites, ban on meat, ban on films, ban this ban that the list goes on. As a person working in the health sector to empower people living with HIV, I would like to briefly talk about the ban on condom TV ads from airing from 10 pm to 6 am. This invariably means limited exposure and reach for the ads and especially during prime time. The condom ads were considered indecent for the viewing of children. On the surface it seems a well-meaning prohibition, however, if we look at the ban in context of few other facts about India such as its bloating population and a worrisome number of annual abortions – it is evident how little India knows or practices safe-sex. According to an article written in 2016 in India Spend 10 million women secretly undergo abortion every year in India, 80% of them at home. ...