Three years ago when a friend whose identity I prefer being hidden told me about the misery her family had been facing because of her uncle who had HIV, it broke my heart. He knew about his sickness and instead of getting treated passed it on to his wife who also ended up being an AIDS patient. At first I thought she might be lying, but by looking at her face I knew she wasn’t.
AIDS – Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome, something we all learnt about in 8th or 9th grade, but I always thought that people suffering from HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) or AIDS barely existed. I always lived a highly sheltered life and talking about sex meant that I was getting into a wrong circle of friends. The scenario from five years back has now changed, people are opening up and are discussing their sexuality, taking it over the internet the moment something sounds offensive, so why not react to the issue of HIV similarly? HIV can be transferred through sexual activity with multiple partners, syringe exchange or through transfusion of the infected blood. HIV is the virus that can cause AIDS, which means, it’s the further stage where survival seems impossible, and they are not the same thing. I specified it because I know people don’t tend to understand the difference between the two.
According to the statistical analysis carried out at the end of 2013, 0.13% of Indians were infected with HIV. Doesn’t it seem like a very small portion? Let’s frame it again, out of 1.2 billion people, 2.1 million were HIV patients. 2.1 million, out of which 130,000 eventually died the same year due to AIDS related illnesses. India is the 3rd largest HIV epidemic in the world. Out of all the Asian countries, 51% deaths due to HIV were recorded to be in India.
Everything seems negligible in percentages, but when the figures are put forth, people realize the actual threat and terror. This is the scenario that we faced two years ago, as per UNAIDS, National AIDS control Organization, 2015, 0.37% in Punjab, 0.40% in Delhi, 0.51% in Chhattisgarh, 0.50% in Gujarat, 0.40% in Maharashtra, 0.59% in Andhra Pradesh, 0.53% in Karnataka, 0.88% in Nagaland, 0.64% in Manipur and 0.68% in Mizoram are suffering from HIV.
If it still seems less amusing then you might be more shocked to know that the highest risk bearers are men who have sex with men or male prostitutes. Here we are in a country where being a bisexual you get judged by every other person and then there are these statistics that show that things like these are happening all around our country. Hypocrisy is in our blood it seems.
Although amidst all the issues of lack of sex education, hypocrisy, no general rights to transgender and poverty, there is a ray of hope that has been able to reduce the risk from the most inflicted areas in the past years. ART or Antiretroviral Therapy is a kind of medicine that helps in stopping the HIV from multiplying and this has been proven by the World Health Organization (WHO). This still doesn’t help as due to the change in infection patterns through injection drug, the cause of concern is as high as it was previously. There are 2,00,000 people who use these injections and are at a higher risk of getting infected.
An issue that seems to be not so important in our society can cause a lot more deaths. The funding this year reduced from Rs.1785 crore in 2014 to Rs.1397 crores this year. UNAIDS have kept 2030 as their margin to end AIDS epidemic across the world. We can hope for their promises to come true and their medicines to work, and there is something else also which we can do. Spread awareness, encourage the use of condoms, explain to your siblings all about sex. An education that cannot take place at school can begin at home. This World Aids Day share safety and spread awareness, because there are kids that still don’t know what it means and are already infected by it.
