THE AIDS BOMB

World Aids Day was celebrated the world over with the message of spreading awareness and not the disease. What has been disturbing this year though has been the rapid increase in the number of HIV cases in India and the ever rising toll it is taking on the country’s people and resources. Aids has now firmly got a vice like grip over India with Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala, Manipur, Nagaland and Uttar Pradesh accounting for the majority of new cases detected. However, that said, the epidemic is truly pandemic in nature and no state has survived its aggressive reach. For years, sadly, we have taken myopic comfort in the fact that the disease was ravaging sub-Saharan Africa and the West, and although the number of dormant cases of Aids was next only to South Africa, the disease was not ‘really’ an epidemic in India. Today the reality is that the disease of global proportions has India as its epicenter and that judgment has some sound backing. Of the 40 million odd people suffering from HIV/AIDS, 6 million are in India. And with figures from China still unverifiable, India truly is the hub of HIV/AIDS. So how have things come to this, how have we gone from just another affected country to the world capital for Aids.

The reasons and causes are not hard to find. With a majority of HIV transmissions passing though unprotected sex, the reason why India is a country with the largest HIV/AIDS population becomes evidently clear. Sex and talking about it is still a big no no in the country. While our urban centers do enjoy a high degree of understanding about the virus and its modes of spread the vast rural hinterland remains largely untouched by this critical awareness strategy. A shocking statistic reveals that one in two sex workers in Mumbai are HIV positive, to think the number of people they can infect and the true reality hits you in the face. A major reason for the spread of the disease has also been the dismal state of women rights. A woman has no right to demand her husband to use a condom and many a times becomes the unfortunate victim for her husband’s follies. Similarly, men who indulge in unprotected sex often do not grasp the true nature of Aids and what it can do for his family and future generations. The need to create awareness on condom use is ever more important in the rural areas where awareness remains abysmally low.

Religious leaders too must share the blame for the continuing rise of HIV/AIDS in the country. Their policy of abstinence and equating AIDS as a disease of the immoral is fuelling the AIDS epidemic. Abstinence was a policy that has been championed by the more conservative governments of the West and Africa. Though, they have enjoyed limited success in those countries, abstinence is only part of the solution and not the Holy Grail for controlling the disease. It is imperative on our religious leaders to spread the message of abstinence and condom use hand in hand rather than see the use of condoms as one that promotes promiscuity.

While at the cost of sounding self-contradictory, the urban Indian while more knowledgeable about HIV/AIDS than in the past has started taking a rather cavalier attitude towards HIV/AIDS for the past few years. Awareness is certainly on the rise, but paradoxically, with new methods to control the spread HIV now clinically in practice, it is making many Indians more callous in its attitude towards HIV/AIDS. With anti-retrovirals finding more acceptance as a means to delay the transfer of HIV to full blown AIDS, people have changed perceptions about the disease. What was once the incurable disease has now turned to one which does have a limited cure for it. This grave misconception does lead to risqué beahviour which is furthering the spread of AIDS. While one does not advocate a fear psychosis to set in people, reminiscent of the 1980’s when AIDS was thought to spread through shaking hands and eating together, the need to inject a healthy fear of the disease and how easily you or I can be victim to it is needed.

One cannot talk about AIDS without talking about the social stigma that attaches on its victims. Countless stories of discrimination – social, economic, educational and professional have become common in the country and the world over. Cases of HIV+ children being abandoned by their parents or HIV+ families being ostracized by their immediate communities fill the newspapers of the day. The early 90’s saw brilliant adverts featuring Shabana Azmi boldly interacting with AIDS patients and asking each citizen to do the same. Such campaigns had a profound affect on society. Unfortunately, today we find that the level of social acceptance is similar to what it was when the disease first found its way to India. A fresh relook is needed to reinject the sense of obligation towards helping those with AIDS is required.

The government on its part has done well to address the issue of AIDS with setting up of NACO and several high end laboratories to check the disease. It is highly unfortunate that the government has also been rather uptight in handling criticism of its policies. Any mention of India being the epicenter of the disease is usually dismissed and the good worked done by the government harped upon. The government will have to realize enormity of the task at hand and deal with the situation with a muti-pronged strategy. Unfortunately for India, there is no one-size-fits-all type of a solution. The many diversities of the country require diverse tactics to control HIV/AIDS. An urban campaign will certainly not work in the rural areas. Similarly what might work in the North of India will differ from the approach needed in the South. Similar adaptations are required on religious and ethnic grounds. Steps like compulsory HIV testing before marriage, while retrograde as may be, is one important method needed to check the spread of the disease. The spread of AIDS through infected needles by intravenous drug users too needs to be addressed rather than taken as a problem affecting a deviant few.

Analysts say that India still has time to buck the trend and get a check on its AIDS crisis. These may be the last few years before we truly are faced with a disease which we are frankly not equipped to handle – medically, socially and economically. Every Indian must do their bit before we are tragically forced to re-define AIDS as the All India Disaster Syndrome.