Study on Impact of TV Advertisements by National Aids Control Organization Campaigns

Since first diagnosis of HIV in 1986 within the country, India now holds the second largest absolute number of HIV infections in the world, following South Africa. With an estimated 5.134 million people living with HIV in the adult population (15-49 years) in 2004, India accounts for almost 13% of the global HIV prevalence. Despite this large number of HIV-infected individuals, because of its large population size, India continues to be in the category of low prevalence countries with an overall prevalence of less than 1%. Tracking the epidemic and implementing effective programmes is made difficult by the fact that there is no one epidemic in India. Rather, there are several localized sub-epidemics reflecting the diversity in socio-culture pattern and multiple vulnerabilities present in the country. Though the overall national prevalence is low, six states have reached high prevalence (> 1%): Manipur, Nagaland, Andhra Pradesh, Tamilnadu, Karnataka and Maharashtra. Certain districts in Goa and Gujarat have also reported high prevalence. With more than doubling from 47 districts in 2002, a total number of 111 districts across the country are now showing a HIV-prevalence above 1% thus classifying as a generalized epidemic. Sexual transmission is driving India‘s AIDS epidemic. This route accounts for approximately 86% of the HIV infections in the country. The remaining 14% are by other routes such as blood transfusion, mother to child transmission and injecting drug use, particularly in North-Eastern states and some metropolitan cities. Young people in India among those at high-risk of contracting HIV. Over 35% of all reported HIV-infections in Since 1998, the Government of India has been conducting annual nationwide sentinel surveillance to monitor the trends and pattern of HIV epidemic. The sentinel sites cover both high-risk populations such as attendees of Sexual Transmitted infections (STI) clinics, injecting drug users (IDU), sex workers and men who have sex with men (MSM) as well as perceived low-risk populations such as women attending personal clinics.

India remains a low prevalence country with overall HIV prevalence of 0.91% (less than 1%), have this masks various sub epidemic in various areas in the country, based on high prevalence observed number of sentinel location sites. Recent surveillance data indicate that in high prevalence states, the epidemic is spreading gradually from urban to rural areas and from high-risk groups to the general population. The epidemic continues to shift towards women with an estimated 39% of the infected being women, increasing the potential of pediatric HIV in the future.

The researchers purely on contents of the TV spot prepared by NACO are almost nil so far. However NACO and other bilateral agencies have been conducting studies time-to-time for formulating and updating their IEC (Information Education Communication) strategies on the basis of Communication Needs Assessment (CNA). Almost all the SACS (State AIDS Control Societies) had conducted CNA in their respective states but their aims and objectives were different to the existing study.

1. To study the various themes of TV AIDS messages. 2. To evaluate the appeals used in TV messages.

The researcher will arrange the HIV/AIDS social TV messages from NACO for the present study. The study will have a comprehensive view from every possible angle and bring out the comparisons and similarities, if any, in these messages. For this study the Content Analysis method will be adopted. This quality analysis will strive to undertake linguistic, cultural, artistic, socio-economic and individualistic element etc. attached to that particular social message. Randomly selected messages of Hindi as well as English will be analyzed, keeping in mind the objectives of the study. The effectiveness of TV spots of NACO will also be analyzing through public opinion. The randomly selected samples of three hundred respondents will be adjudged through a questionnaire. The generated data of content analyses as well as public survey will be interpreted to give conclusions and summary along with limitations of the study.

The presents study has yielded a wealth of very rich data as findings. We have attempted to classify and organize this data in the study so that insights can be obtained, inferences can be drawn and conclusions can be reached. These would be useful for assessing the impact of the present media campaign and to develop effective campaign strategies in future. The media campaign, which used Television, Radio and Newspaper for communicating messages, was aimed at increasing the awareness, improving the knowledge and inculcating changed desirable behaviour among the target audience. The basic communication was woven around the theme of ‗Prevention of Parent-to-child transmission (PPTCT)‘ of HIV/AIDS and therefore the conclusions that are included in this chapter will cover only the impact in that domain.

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Research Scholar of OPJS University, Churu, Rajasthan