Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2006. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - July 16, 2006
Suthentira Govender
Dr Bianca Nazareth, deputy president of the Asia Pacific Alliance of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA), said the disease was growing at an alarming rate in the subcontinent.
Nazareth, who was in Durban this week for the World Council of YMCAs, said the HIV/Aids challenges facing India mirrored Africa's struggle with the disease. "Indians find it difficult to accept and even talk about it," she said.
Nazareth, a dentist based at a hospital in Pune, near Mumbai, said some doctors avoided treating HIV/Aids patients.
"It's not because they don't like them, they are scared of contracting it themselves.
"Many patients don't admit they are HIV-positive or have full-blown Aids. It's a terrible social stigma in India."
According to statistics of the Indian National Aids Control Organisation, more than five million Indians were HIV-positive at the end of last year.
UNAIDS/World Health Org- anisation said between 270000 and 680000 Indians died of Aids in 2005, compared with two million people in sub-Saharan Africa.
The YMCA in India - the second-largest in the world - is using young people as its mouthpiece to spread awareness of the disease. "The youth are pulled in to create awareness in schools, colleges and villages," said Nazareth.
"Getting infected people to admit and accept their status is often challenging. Often HIV/Aids sufferers are thrown out by their families. We have to help them to find homes that will accept them."
The YMCA had also develop-ed HIV/Aids outreach programmes for infected sex workers and truckers.
"Our workers go into areas where sex workers operate to interact with them and help them if they want to quit the industry."
Nazareth said a stumbling block was convincing Indians that the organisation was not only for Christians.
"India is a multi-ethnic, multi-religious country. It is diffi- cult for the YMCA, being a Christian organisation, to find its base in such a culture.
"We don't force Christianity on anybody. The YMCA is more a social organisation than a religious organisation. Religion comes through in our work rather than in what we speak."
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