World Health Organisation (WHO) says, ‘HIV is not an easy virus to defeat’. It still claims a million lives each year.
WHO further says “fear,stigma and ignorance” is there but I think we surely have come a long long way.
When I started covering it, the disease was called an epidemic. In late 1980’s it was most dreaded. There was no medicine and the disease was contagious. The stigma was more because of the routes of spread, sexual primarily and than further spread from mother to child, through infected needles. Around 2003, when I started exploring the subject, it was not just a scare, people saw it like death sentence.
Till than the disease was what an uncles friend who lived in US and had apparently contracted it there.
People spoke about “how burial of the dead was a problem and the associated stigma made lives of the living miserable”.
The diseased were thrown out of their homes, families refused to help and life basically came to nothing .
My first tryst with HIV/AIDS was the regular briefings at the health ministry, the gyan about surging numbers in epicenters like some places in South India, some North Eastern state, a few places in central India. But what hit me was the a visit to an orphanage where most children had lost their parents to HIV/AIDS.
These children-some of them, positive themselves were abandoned by families and were taken care of by the helpers/volunteers in the homes. I have always been good with children but even I at first wondered whether hugging them, making them sit in my lap was ok. Yes that was till my motherly instinct took over and I couldn’t resist anymore. That’s when I got drawn to AIDS as my area of interest. And I saw a different world. Covering this subject and the passion to do better increased with every story. My endeavor was to make a difference in the lives of people with HIV.
Tell their stories- positive stories where they were the protagonists, they were loving parents, spouses, children.
To be continued .