Shillong, July 24: The Meghalaya government has decided to develop a comprehensive policy on a mission mode to address the spread of HIV/AIDS in the state.

The decision was made in a meeting chaired by Deputy Chief Minister incharge Home (Police) Prestone Tynsong and attended by Health Minister Ampareen Lyngdoh, Social Welfare Minister Paul Lyngdoh and eight MLAs from East Khasi Hills District.

Addressing media persons after the meeting, Ampareen Lyngdoh said, “This meeting has taken a resolution today that the government of Meghalaya has to get into a mission mode to redress the spread of HIV/AIDS. The department of health has been tasked with the responsibility of coming up with a cabinet note to envisage a comprehensive policy on a mission mode to redress and address the spread of HIV/AIDS.”
“The government will hold meetings in Garo Hills and Jaintia Hills to discuss the issue and develop strategies to address it. We will be consulting with bureaucrats and senior doctors to guide the way forward,” she added.

The health minister emphasized that the government will not share specific data on hotspots to avoid stigmatizing individual constituencies.

Presenting an alarming statistic, Lyngdoh said that the number of HIV/AIDS cases in East Khasi Hills has doubled to 3,432, with only 1,581 patients coming forward for treatment. She also revealed that a significant number of 681 patients have been lost to follow-up, which is a worrying trend.

“We have spoken only on East Khasi Hills today. In EKH, the number is very high. The highest in the state of Meghalaya unfortunately is Jaintia Hills. Both West and East Jaintia Hills are very alarming numbers but Khasi Hills is also following in its trend,” the minister added.

Meghalaya ranked sixth in the country in terms of HIV/AIDS prevalence, with the northeast region being particularly affected.

To a query, Lyngdoh has suggested that Meghalaya should have its own set of laws to benefit the community by considering making HIV/AIDS testing compulsory before marriage, similar to the law in Goa. According to her, awareness about the disease is no longer a major issue, but testing and screening need to be improved.

“There are certain laws in operation that don’t allow us to freely work on the testing and the screening but if the state of Goa has made HIV/AIDS testing compulsory before any couple marries why shouldn’t Meghalaya also have its own sets of laws, which are going to be good for the community at large,” she said adding  “So, we will now be looking at that because this is the first time that a group of MLAs have come forward to tell us that you have to do it.”

The health minister also announced that the government will engage with legal experts and the health department to explore the possibility of introducing legislation making HIV/AIDS testing compulsory. Meghalaya is now mentally prepared to take strong actions to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS.

“(We will sit to discuss on) how a legislation of that nature will pan out but Meghalaya now is mentally prepared and ready to take the monster by its neck and we are okay with it. At one point we never had this interaction and we never had this participation. It looks like 2026 to 2025 enough information has gone out. Now we have to take strong actions,” she asserted.

Further, Lyngdoh has expressed concern over the number of deaths due to loss of Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) treatment in the state.

“The figure of 159 deaths due to loss of ART treatment is huge in the district. We have to make sure that everyone at least who has been tested comes into the system for necessary treatment. HIV/AIDS actually is not fatal but it can be treated like cancer or TB or any other diseases. There is a treatment protocol in place,” she said while highlighting that the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in Meghalaya is predominantly due to sexual interaction.

She also expressed fear saying, “Despite the fact that these numbers are huge, there could be more people in the communities and around us who are not coming forward.”

Asked, the health minister said, “We are different from certain states where they have reached that stage where injecting drug users and sharing needles is a big component. In our state, we have not even been able to identify injecting drug users and prevalence of HIV/AIDS because we are not able to test citizens correctly.”

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