Manipur HIV positive pin hopes on Bill Gates

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Manipur HIV positive pin hopes on Bill Gates

Kathmandu, Dec 16 : An AIDS victim and activist from Manipur, one of

India's worst AIDS-hit regions, says people in the state are pinning

their hopes on Bill Gates.

Lila Bantha Singh, here to attend a conference on the killer disease,

says his group ,Manipur Network of Positive People, has applied for a

grant to help check the infection in the northeastern state.

" Not many people can afford treatment, " Singh laments, and that is

the case in most parts of India, where 4.58 million people are HIV

positive.

" There are only four to five doctors in the whole state to treat

people with HIV/AIDS. The medicines are costly and the infection

starts getting drug-resistant. You realise you will have to live your

whole life like this. "

When Singh became an intravenous drug user in the early 1980s, he had

a vague idea it was hazardous to share a syringe but he didn't know

exactly why.

" In 1981-82, there were no disposable syringes available in Manipur

and buying them from pharmacies was not possible, " says the 38-year-

old architect.

" We knew something dangerous would eventually happen to all of us but

we still gave in to peer pressure. "

Singh, who started taking heroin first out of curiosity and then

because " it became a kind of disease " , would spend between Rs.50 to

Rs.100 for a fix, raising the money " by hook or by crook " .

When his family became aware of his problem, he was sent to a

rehabilitation centre but it didn't work. So he went back again in

1992 when a routine blood test confirmed that he had become HIV

positive.

And he was not alone. There were hundreds in the rehab centres who

were like him, smitten by a strange affliction they knew nothing

about and were afraid to discuss in public.

" We would meet secretly in our homes to find out facts about HIV and

AIDS, " Singh told IANS. " Then in 1997, we decided to come together. "

It was the year the Manipur Network of Positive People was formed

with the help of the Chennai-based " Indian Network of People Living

with HIV/AIDS " to discuss and address the problems of the infection

in the state.

Manipur Network runs a mobile clinic equipped with a doctor, nurse

and counsellor. It has set up similar groups in Nagaland, Assam and

Mizoram.

" Officially, there are 15,800 infected people in Manipur, " says

Singh, who is also president of the Manipur Network.

" But unofficially, their number is possibly double, or even triple,

that. Every locality has at least one infected person, indeed, every

family has one such victim. "

The alarming thing is the rapid spread of the disease. " At first, the

disease spread mostly among drug users, " Singh says.

" Now it is spreading among the general population through means other

than shared syringes, like sex and mother to child transmission. "

The political turmoil in the state virtually cut off from the world,

lack of development -- and most importantly -- the absence of means

of entertainment - are the factors fanning the disease, Singh said.

" Everything closes after dusk, there are strikes and curfew and even

Hindi films are not shown, " he said. " So people tend to turn to

dangerous experiments. "

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