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It is bad enough that people are dying of AIDS, but no one should die
of ignorance. ~Elizabeth
Taylor
The first documented case of AIDS in India was reported in 1986. Ever since the first report of HIV infection, tackling the issue of social discrimination against HIV/AIDS has been a challenging task. The first reaction to the emergence of HIV/AIDS was to expel HIV-positive visitors, to jail nationals living with HIV or to quarantine people on remote islands. India even went through a period of denial through the late 1980’s. Nothing much has changed since then.
Traditional beliefs about sex, misconceptions regarding the spread of HIV, are some of the factors held responsible for discrimination, stigmatization against those afflicted with the disease. As with any other disease, the social response to AIDS in India has been a negative one. Studies conducted to assess the attitude of people related to AIDS revealed that 36% of people felt it would be better if infected people killed themselves and that people with AIDS deserved their fate. Nearly 34% expressed reluctance to associate with a HIV positive patient and a more than 1/5th stated that AIDS was a punishment from God.
The worst affected amongst the lot seems to be HIV positive women; evident from the way they are being treated. Men are likely to be spared for their behavior that resulted in their infection, whereas women are not. HIV positive women are likely to be abandoned by their husbands or evicted from home by their families and rejected by their friends and colleagues. Women are even blamed by their parents and in-laws for infecting their husbands, or for not controlling their partners' urges to have sex with other women.
On this World AIDS day, certain social issues have to be given the deserved importance. Will it be acceptable to only blame certain individuals or groups to account for the ever-increasing incidence of AIDS? By doing so, are we trying to shun the responsibility of caring and looking after the AIDS/HIV victims? Can health policies or laws alone help combat the fear and prejudice related to HIV/AIDS? Are we still going to try finding out who was responsible for bringing in the dreaded disease into the country rather than working on ways to combat it? Are these so perceived ‘outsider groups’ still be denied access to the services and treatment they need?
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