Imphal, January 05: A week-long photo exhibition on the theme of �AIDS awareness-Healthy Mother, Healthy Child� has began from today at Hindi Parishad, Assembly Road.

All Manipur Voluntary Health Association secretary L Sarat Singh and AIR Imphal Correspondent BB Sharma inaugurated the exhibition being organised by Directorate of Audio Visual Publicity, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India as chief guest and guest of honour respectively.

Speaking at the inaugural function, Sarat said there are over 18,000 people who are HIV positive in Manipur.

This was confirmed after screening 1.2 lakhs suspected cases of HIV infection.

In such a situation, if all the 24 lakhs population of the State were screened, the number of HIV infection people might be more, he said.

Elaborating on the objective of organising the photo exhibition, Sarat said it proposed the highlight the problems of HIV/AIDS in Manipur with special focus on women and children who are more vulnerable.

In view of the magnitude of the problem and its alarming nature, Sarat opined that such exhibition should also be organised in different parts of the State and the captions given under the photographs being exhibited should be written in the local dialect or language of the area concerned so that the message would be communicated easily.

He also appealed to all the NGOs working in the field of HIV/AIDS to work with dedication and sincerity.

In his address, BB Sharma, who attended the function as guest of honour observed that the only way to prevent HIV/AIDS epidemic to make all the people aware of the disease and its problem.

There is no medicine to cure the disease till date, so all of us should stand on guard from getting infected, he noted.

Research Officer DAVP, New Delhi N Mujoy gave the welcome address.

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