Karuna Roy gets EH Johnson prize

TORONTO: Karuna Roy, coordinator, HIV/AIDS Programme, Synodical Board of Health Services Church of North India (CNI), will receive the prestigious 2006 E H Johnson award from the Presbyterian Church in Canada.

The award ceremony will be held on Tuesday, June 6 in St Catherine’s, Ontario. Roy, a former teacher from New Delhi, is in charge of several CNI awareness and prevention programmes for people infected and affected by HIV/AIDS. Roy has entirely designed and formulated the CNI’s HIV/AIDS programme which includes innovative prevention programmes for school-aged children and the youth. She also heads a programme that works with commercial sex workers along one of India’s busy highways.

Karuna Roy, who is currently in Toronto to receive the award, feels it is a great honour to be recognised for her work in India. “This award is a recognition for all frontline HIV/AIDS workers in India and I accept the award on their behalf,” says Roy. “I will continue to work for people living with HIV/AIDS,” she promises.

Due to the stigma attached to HIV/AIDS and people treating it as a highly sexual infection, Roy feels that religious heads and faith-based organisations must play a greater role in changing people’s attitudes around HIV/AIDS, especially those coming from the South Asian Diaspora.

Roy uses innovative and creative techniques to spread awareness about AIDS. With her skills of writing poetry, stories, skits, lyrics and plays, she has produced a number of informative educational pamphlets and communications materials for the HIV/AIDS programme, including two audio and two video CDs. “I have also written a qawalli on AIDS, which is very popular in India,” reveals Roy, who is also the chairperson of the Council for World Mission Working Committee of the AIDS Task Force Africa Region.

Previous recipients of the E H Johnson Award include Archbishop Desmond Tutu (1993) and Barbara Jackman (1989).