AIDS ravages rural India

[Guest guest]

AIDS ravages rural India

by Francince Orr, Los Angeles Times, December 21, 2006.No country has more

people with HIV, and villagers often are unable to access help.

December 21, 2006

IN THE 25 YEARS since it was identified, the virus that causes AIDS

has traveled a highway of humanity to all corners of Earth.

It has crossed oceans and continents; it stalks the world's most

marginal people as they struggle to survive.

K. Sangeetha's husband brought HIV/AIDS home to their village of

Gangaikondacholapuram on a rickety bus from Chennai, the coastal city

better known to many as Madras.

Each day, poor men like him from villages throughout the world's

second most populous country head to the booming cities to find work.

The road from Sangeetha's village to Chennai to the north is about

175 miles; along the way laborers find work in quarries, brick plants

or sugar cane fields.

When they go, the men stay for months at a time, leaving their wives

and children as they try to earn enough money to pull their families

out of the poverty of subsistence farming. Many of them also

encounter prostitutes while they are away from home and contract HIV.

Many, like Sangeetha's husband, die.

India has surpassed South Africa as the country with the largest

number of people living with HIV/AIDS. As of last year, there were an

estimated 5.7 million of them.

India's government is fighting back. It is offering free

antiretroviral drugs in the larger cities. A local organization has

enlisted barbers in the fight: They hand out free condoms and comic

books to educate men about the disease.

Rural people have heard that there is hope if they can get to the

cities. But for many of them, it still is out of reach.

For some who have been stricken, the seven-hour bus ride to Chennai

and hours of standing in line for a month's supply of drugs are too

difficult. For others, the $6 cost of the bus ticket is too much.

So they stay home, often stigmatized by their neighbors, left to

confront the certainty of decline and death in the same isolation in

which they lived.

Sangeetha, a 35-year-old widow with a 15-year-old daughter, was one such woman.

She died this fall.

By going to the link below, and then clicking on the photograph, an

interactive audiovisual slide show can be seen, which highlights the

problems of PLHIV in remote rural areas (but this slide show requires

fast internet connection).

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-aidsindia21dec21,0,3214999.s\

tory

____________________

Koen VanRompay <kkvanrompay@...>