By Prashant K. Nanda, IANS
New Delhi : At a time when India's HIV/AIDS numbers have been halved in heartening new findings, growing discrimination against HIV patients is causing worry to health workers and rights activists.
Non-governmental experts and some government officials believe that just like leprosy, HIV/AIDS is slowly becoming a complex social and health problem for the country.
The number of people living with HIV/AIDS in the country has been now put at 2.5 million, less than half of what was previously estimated.
But several recent cases of discrimination against HIV patients have brought out in stark light the social stigma such patients face in India.
They relate to five HIV positive children in Kerala, who were turned away from school, and the husband of an HIV positive pregnant woman, who was forced to deliver their baby after doctors at a hospital in Meerut (Uttar Pradesh) refused to do so.
According to health experts, these two cases are just the tip of the iceberg.
"Stigma and discrimination against AIDS patients are quite prevalent in all states of the country. The Meerut and Kerala cases were just a visual capsule of a larger social epidemic," said Anjali Gopalan, head of Naz Foundation that works among HIV/AIDS affected.
"It's happening in Mumbai, in Delhi and all so-called socially sensitive and conscious states. Relatives, neighbours, teachers, doctors and sometimes even family members look down upon HIV positive people," Gopalan told IANS. "As a civilised country, where are we going?"
Terming the cases of discrimination a "social menace", Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss said: "We need to also feel a sense of shame that we as a society continue to lack compassion and stigmatise those that have the misfortune of being affected by this disease."
In the Meerut case, Rahees Abbas, 28, helped his pregnant wife deliver at the Lala Lajpat Rai Medical College after doctors refused to tend to her due to her HIV positive status.
In Kerala, five students of a school in Kottayam district were thrown out due to their HIV positive status after parents of the other children refused to send their wards to the school.
National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) chief K. Sujatha Rao said: "The recent incidents of discrimination are shameful. If someone is HIV positive that does not mean people should misbehave with them. We have asked both the Uttar Pradesh and Kerala governments to take appropriate action."
But scratch beneath the surface and it will be clear that many ordinary people fear HIV/AIDS and mistakenly think the virus spreads through touch – although NGOs and the government keep stressing that the only way it spreads is through unsafe sex or infected injecting needles.
Rakesh Kumar, an auto driver in Delhi, is one such person.
"Many people don't know about the disease and its cause, so it is very natural that they fear AIDS patients. I know that AIDS kills and would never send my kids to a school that has AIDS patients," he said.
"I don't have much of an idea about AIDS and no one has ever tried to inform me about it," he added.
But Sajan Yadav, another auto driver, said, "It's not fair to ill-treat an AIDS patient but there is a lot of fear among people about them as they still are not aware of the cause of the disease," he said.
"Why don't they punish the doctors and teachers who deny their services to such people?"
Commenting on both the Kerala and Uttar Pradesh cases, Health Secretary Naresh Dayal told IANS: "These are outrageous. This needs to end with immediate effect."
(Prashant Nanda can be contacted at [email protected])