InterPress News Service (IPS); Tuesday, 8 July 1997.
R. Devraj

The worst-hit by an AIDS scare, the result of inappropriate awareness campaigns, are suspected HIV-carriers in the rural areas where primary health is notoriously deficient and testing facilities non-existent.

An emerging pattern shows people suspected of having HIV and their families face social ostracisation -- the abiding reaction of India's villages, which are ridden with prejudice, illiteracy and poverty.

Last month, a volunteer organisation, the Joint-Action Council, Kannur (JACK) produced before the press in New Delhi the family of a truck driver, Ranbir Singh, who had died suddenly on May 21 in his village of Chochi in neighbouring Haryana state.

Said Babli, Ranbir's widow: "I don't know how my husband died but people in the village now accuse me and my three young daughters of being infected with HIV."

But it is not only Babli and her children but the whole of Chochi which has been boycotted by the neighbouring villages. "Nobody gives us employment or enters into a marriage alliance with anybody from our village," said Azad Singh, a former headman.

Azad Singh said he was shocked by local newspaper reports that described Chochi as an "AIDS village", implying also that its inhabitants are somehow promiscuous. He also complained that the villagers are now under pressure by the administration to undergo HIV testing.

A five-member fact-finding team from Delhi was told by members of the local administration that since Ranbir Singh was a truck driver, and belonged to a high-risk group, the testing was ordered because of "prima-facie" evidence and because of a scare among the villagers.

What happened to Chochi is not uncommon. The latest victims of ostracisation belong to the family of Jogendra Singh, another truck driver who died of unestablished causes in a hamlet 50 kms from Delhi and close to the Chandinagar air force base.

While Jogendra Singh's father Chaudhuri Jaipal Singh maintains that his son died of blood cancer, rumours are afloat that he had contracted HIV. Pending the result of blood-tests, his immediate family has been placed under an unofficial quarantine.

Convenor of JACK Purshottam Mulloli blames the situation on an "irresponsible policy targetting so-called high-risk groups which includes truck drivers, sex workers and homosexuals.

JACK began its activities in Kerala state's Kannur district where, last year, after a truck driver named Raju died of hepatitis in Ulickal, the villagers isolated his family and even burned down a barber shop he had patronised.

Armed with records of similar instances from across the country, JACK has formally petitioned Junior Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare Renuka Choudhry to call off the "targetted high-risk group" approach.

Along with other non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and human rights organisations, JACK also plans to petition the National Human Rights Commission against the present HIV/AIDS control policy which, it says, is guided by "foreign donor agencies and their so-called experts".

"What India needs is a community-based prevention and control programme rather than one which targets high-risk groups after the western model," says Dr Sushma Sengupta of 'Drishtikon', a leading NGO which is funded by the government's National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO), set up in 1991 to disburse a 100 million dollar loan from the World Bank for anti-AIDS campaigns.

Sengupta describes as "misplaced" the targetting of homosexuals for instance by foreign donors. "Heterosexual transmission accounts for two-thirds of all HIV-positive cases in India as opposed to countries in the West where 70 percent of infection can be traced to homosexuals," she said.

Another group which plans to oppose the high-risk group approach is the Citizens for Democracy (CFD) whose vice- president, N.D. Pancholi is also a prominent truck driver union leader.

"Truck drivers are not any more promiscuous than other groups and in fact tend to be god-fearing and have a high sense of morality," says Pancholi who was for 20 years the secretary and president of a transport workers union with 20,000 members.

The tragedy is that many truck drivers are unaware that they belong to a targetted group because they are constantly on the move, he adds, pointing out that the social boycott of families of dead truck drivers could create resentment.

According to Pancholi, the whole anti-AIDS campaign needs to be reoriented taking into account the social and cultural background of the country -- instead of a blind acceptance of strategies outlined by donor agencies.

"At the minimum there should be a comprehensive reproductory health programme," said Dr Sengupta, who supervised unlinked, anonymous testing of 4,000 people in Delhi and discovered "a 15 to 20 percent incidence of STD among them although HIV is still negligible."

The high incidence of STD indicated that multi-partner sex is far more common among ordinary people than popularly believed, and puts to question the high-risk category approach.

In Dr Sengupta's view, high-risk groups like sex workers are at least aware of the hazards they face, but ordinary people have a complacent attitude which could result in an explosion of AIDS when HIV gains a hold among them.

Last week, Health Minister Choudhry officially announced that the virus had percolated through "transmission chains" to low- risk groups such as housewives and children. "There is no aspect of our lives where HIV is not relevant -- HIV is there among us, between us," she said. (End/IPS/rd/an/97)

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