Avert Society

India is one of the largest and most populated countries in the world, with over one billion inhabitants. Of this number, it's estimated that around 2.5 million people are currently living with HIV.

STD stands for Sexually Transmitted Disease (sometimes called Sexually Transmitted Infection). This is an infection which can be caught by having sexual contact with someone who is infected. This can be vaginal, oral or anal sex, although other types of touching can pass some STDs - for example, some STDs (such as Herpes and HPV) can be caught by touching the infected areas of someone's body and then touching your own genitals (private parts). There are quite a lot of different STDs.

The summary report gives the key findings and conclusions of the HIV/AIDS Behavioral Surveillance Survey (BSS) conducted between October 1999 and March 2001 in selected areas of Maharashtra.

The objective of the BSS (Wave II) was to provide trends of behavioral indicators to inform program development for the expansion of interventions aimed at the reduction in the transmission of HIV/AIDS and STIs in the selected districts of Maharashtra.

The purpose of the Behavioral Surveillance Survey (BSS) is to systematically monitor trends in HIV / STI risk behavior over time.

Avert Society has been conducting BSS in seven priority districts of the Maharashtra state since 2004 and completed Wave V in 2009.

This was the first round of BSS for the Maharashtra State and would serve as the baseline.