Reuters report on HIV in Eth district of Uttar Pradesh

[Guest guest]

Dear All,

After such a long time I came across an article by Reuters on HIV in Uttar

Pradesh especially focusing Etah. If I remember correctly, this is the same

district that went without HIV testing kits for two months at a stretch.

Despite such trying & severe constraints the work & networking by the HIV+

network deserves to be applauded. Please join me to encouraging & applauding

them.

_______________

India faces hard fight to beat AIDS in populous state

Tue Sep 12, 2006 9:27am ET

By Kamil Zaheer

EKA, India (Reuters) - Sitting on a wooden bench under a slowly whirring fan,

43-year-old Prempal says he urgently needs anti-retroviral drugs to fight the

HIV illness in his body.

" I just might die before I can start my treatment, " Prempal said with a

hysterical laugh as he waited in a doctor's consultation room in Eka, a small

town of some 15,000 people in India's most populous state of Uttar Pradesh.

" We need help, " he said, the pitch of his voice rising as he spoke in the

sparsely furnished medical clinic.

The tall, gangly tailor was diagnosed with HIV in July but he has not yet

managed to get hold of anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs or even arrange an HIV test

for his wife.

Prempal is unsure how to get free drugs from the government and the closest

hospital offering free treatment is nearly 200 km (120 miles) away in New Delhi.

Drugs from private chemists are too expensive at around 1,400 rupees ($30) a

month, more than half Prempal's monthly salary.

He has twice taken his wife to the nearby town of Etah, only to find the

state-run testing center had not received its supply of HIV-testing kits for

over a month.

India has a fight on its hands to win its war against AIDS in the northern state

of Uttar Pradesh, a key battleground if the country is to conquer the epidemic,

activists say.

Dangerous lack of information about HIV together with an overburdened,

poorly-run state healthcare system make the state a potential AIDS time bomb,

the activists said.

" States like Uttar Pradesh are grey zones which could blow up in our face, " said

Anjali Gopalan, head of the New Delhi-based Naz Foundation India, a leading AIDS

activist organization.

Political apathy, bureaucratic sloth and desperate poverty compound the problem

in a state which is home to 170 million people, more than Germany and Britain

combined.

The United Nations AIDS agency, UNAIDS, says 5.7 million Indians are infected

with HIV, the world's highest caseload.

One of the poorest of India's 29 states, Uttar Pradesh has an official HIV

caseload of just 15,000 people but activists say this figure could be a gross

underestimate due to inadequate testing facilities in the state.

AIDS DEATHS GO UNRECORDED

A lack of testing kits has meant that dozens of people -- some of them potential

HIV carriers -- have been turned away from the Etah medical center in recent

weeks without being tested.

The staff are not sure when authorities in the state capital, Lucknow, will send

them the badly needed kits.

The state's AIDS control chief Shashi Prakash Goyal admits the official count of

HIV-positive people in Uttar Pradesh is an underestimate, as social stigmas

discourage people from reporting cases

But activists believe that it is almost impossible that a state with nearly

three times as many people as Britain has less than a quarter of its caseload.

Especially since India has one of the highest HIV rates in the world.

Many people with AIDS in the state die of secondary infections and their cause

of death is listed as tuberculosis or viral fever, activists say.

" My wife died seven months ago because of AIDS but that was not listed as the

cause of death, " said a former insurance agent who is also infected with the

virus in Etah, a town of 100,000 people surrounded by lentil, millet and paddy

fields.

" I did not want the stigma of AIDS attached to her, " he said, requesting that

his name not be made public.

CONCERN RISING, ACTION URGED

There are only three state hospitals in Uttar Pradesh that provide free ARV

drugs, roughly one center for 55 million people.

In India, government centers provide free treatment to nearly 50,000 people, a

fraction of those who need it.

Officials are worried about the lack of data on Uttar Pradesh and plan to double

the number of testing and surveillance sites in the state to more than 80 by the

end of the year.

" We need to be pro-active rather than reactive and go after information, rather

than wait for it to come to us in a format we like, " said Denis Broun, UNAIDS

country coordinator for India

Grinding poverty has led to the large-scale migration of workers to more

prosperous states in western and southern India, where HIV is more prevalent.

These migrant workers sometimes contract HIV from prostitutes and then pass it

on to their wives when they return home. Women now make up about 40 percent of

HIV cases in India, many of them are infected by their husbands.

" People who have tested positive often do not come forward for treatment, " said

Pavan Sharma, head of the Etah Positive Peoples Welfare Society, adding he has

to go undercover to villages to arrange treatment and give counseling.

Shortly afterwards, Sharma counsels a young farmer and his wife who tested

positive this week.

" Don't cry. Being HIV positive does not mean you will die soon, " he told the

young woman as she wiped tears with the corner of her pink-and-gold sari.

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______________________

Phone Number of the Secretary Etah HIV+ Network - Mr. Pavan Sharma - +91

9235715321.

With warm regards.

Suman Jana

E-mail: <sumanjana@...>