Jharkhand: Where Mumbai is main cause of AIDS

[Guest guest]

Vishnugarh/ Jharkhand: Where Mumbai is main cause of AIDS

Ehtasham Khan in Hazaribagh | March 09, 2005 17:48 IST

There is a perennial fear in the eyes of Kisya Devi, 30, these days.

She rarely speaks. She answers each question after a long pause.

She dying a slow death. However, she is not bothered about her own

life as much as that of her two children. Her eldest daughter Saritwa

is eight and son Hirwa was born in February.

Her husband Khago Mahto, 32, died in December. Mahto had AIDS. Devi

was declared HIV positive in the preliminary test. She doesn't have

money for a confirmatory test.

Her newborn is suspected of carrying the deadly virus.

She lives in a hut in Chano village in Vishnugarh town, about 150 km

from Jharkhand's capital Ranchi.

Making AIDS drugs available

Vishnugarh, with its 27 villages and 150,000 people, has another

deadly name -- " AIDS capital of Jharkhand. "

Devi's story is just one among several in this village. The village

does not have basic facilities including roads, clean drinking water,

hospital and electricity.

A muddy and bumpy road crossing through the fields leads to Devi's

two-room hut.

Treating AIDS orphans with care

Like most young men in the village, Devi's husband Mahto went to

Mumbai to work as a labourer when he was just 10.

He sent money home regularly. The meager amount that he sent was like

manna from heaven for his poor family. While he stayed in Mumbai, his

two brothers worked in the fields back home.

He got married about 10 years ago. He used to come home for about a

month every year. Last July, he fell sick. So he came back home. His

condition deteriorated. He got medicine from local quacks to no avail.

As most people going to work in Mumbai from this village are suspected

of having HIV/AIDS, a friend advised him to go for the test. Mahto

tested positive for AIDS.

Devi says he stopped sleeping with her after the medical report. But

by then she had already conceived. Hirwa was born in February.

" Sab babaal kar delthin (villagers made it a controversy), " she says.

The disease is a stigma and the patient and his/her family is left

isolated from the society here. Mahto's two brothers left him and went

to another house. Only his mother, wife and daughter stayed with him.

He died but passed on the virus (known here as bimari or disease) to

his wife and unborn son.

After the birth of her son, she went to a small private pathology lab

in the town for the test after neighbours pressurised her.

The preliminary test cost her Rs 500. The confirmatory test is done in

Hazaribagh, about 80 km from her house, for Rs 1,400. She doesn't have

money for that.

No one knows that she was positive in the first test. " If they know,

they will make my life hell. They suspect it and have asked my

daughter to stay away from me, " Devi said.

She feels she is physically fit and healthy and can work. With a baby

in her lap, she stays at home. Her mother-in-law works as a labourer

and cooks at home. The family has 50 sq feet of land to grow vegetables.

Devi says her husband told her before dying that he had gone to a sex

worker in Mumbai before the marriage. That is how he got the disease,

she said.

Mumbai for the villagers here is synonymous with AIDS.

This is because most men from Vishnugarh go to Mumbai as labourers and

drivers as there is little source of income at home.

Whatever money they send has not been able to change the villages. It

looks as ancient and poor as in some art movies.

Amidst the hutments stands a giant mansion of Teklal Mahto. He was

Jharkhand Mukti Morcha legislator three times from Vishnugarh.

Now a member of Parliament from neighbouring Giridih, he comes to his

native village once in a month. He is not much connected to the villagers.

In almost every village in Vishnugarh, one or two people have died of

AIDS. Therefore, voluntary groups call it " AIDS capital of Jharkhand. "

In Banaso village, Nunnu Shaw died of AIDS last year. He was working

in Mumbai since boyhood. He died just one month after marriage.

His parents are now looking for a match for their young widowed

daughter-in-law. They haven't got her tested as of now.

Another man Gokul Shaw, 70, died of AIDS two years ago. In this

village, five people have died of the disease. One was Vijay Singh,

19, and his uncle Noon Chand Singh, 25.

Noon Chand left behind two sons and wife Malti. Fortunately, they

haven't tested positive.

People here are aware of AIDS and how it happens. Still there are

misconceptions related to the disease.

There are several NGOs claiming to be working on HIV/AIDS awareness in

Vishnugarh. But most of their work is onely on paper.

Just one NGO had come to the village a day before rediff.com visited

the place. They performed a street play on HIV/AIDS and pasted

posters. Though most people could not read the posters but they

understood the play.

Barber Chetlal Thakur says AIDS is caused when one goes to Mumbai and

has sex with prostitutes. He knows it also spreads through blood

transfusion. He is aware that his razor can transmit the disease. So

he keeps two sets of razors. One is the traditional one in which the

blade is fixed. It has potential of spreading AIDS. So it costs Rs3

per shave. The other razor costs Rs 4 because a new blade is used for

each shave.

Thakur says: " Most people want the Rs 3 shave. I have to do what they

want. "

The government has HIV/AIDS prominently on its radar. There are about

5.3 million people in India infected with HIV/AIDS.

Global agencies say the figure could be much more than this. After the

change of government at the Centre last year, the strategy for

tackling the disease changed.

The previous government wanted to promote abstinence for preventing

the disease. The incumbent government has taken it upon itself in a

big way to create awareness on the disease and promote the use of condoms.

However, the basic testing facility and monitoring mechanism seems to

be lacking in places like Vishnugarh that have potential of affecting

a large population.

The government hospital in Vishnugarh is a dilapidated two-room

building. The only equipment here is the X-ray machine. Nobody knows

when it was used the last time. The doctors just look at the patient

and prescribe medicine.

The preliminary testing facility is available in five private

unrecognised labs in front of the government hospital in Vishnugarh.

For the confirmatory test, the patients are sent to neighbouring

Hazaribagh. There too, only the private labs have this facility.

The officials say they don't have the budget for this. Whatever little

money they get for HIV/AIDS it is spent on awareness campaigns, they say.

But even publicity could not be seen on the ground.

Poor villagers do not have money to go to private hospitals and labs.

S N Lal, the government doctor at Vishnugarh hospital, was suspended

two years ago because he released a report showing high prevalence of

HIV/AIDS in that area.

The authorities said it created panic in the villages.

The report said 15 people had died of AIDS and four were detected

positive in 2002 in Vishnugarh.

Arun Kumar, medical officer of the government hospital, said: " We do

not have any facility for HIV testing. If we suspect, we tell the

patients to go to private clinics. I have explained the situation to

my seniors. "

Virender Kumar of voluntary group Ayachi Foundation said: " The

government wants to downplay the problem. It is a serious issue and if

not tackled now, it will create havoc in future. "

http://in.rediff.com/news/2005/mar/09aids.htm

[Guest guest]

Dear Readers,

Another sad story that could be replicated throughout villages in the whole

of India.

The first question I want to canvas is how many people have ever contracted

aids from the barber. The answer I suspect is none unless they are also

having unprotected sex with him.

We hear always of quarantining people including mothers from their normal

duties, for what purpose?

They are not a risk to their families friends or even their children. The

only proviso I make is that they should only refrain from using sharp knives

and then only to protect themselves because cut finger can't harm family

members but increases the risk of further infection to the patient.

Mumbai is not the cause of HIV infection it is clearly a lack of

understanding of protective behaviour when engaging in sexual behaviour but

how much tuition about safer sexual behaviour is incorporated in village

education programs.

The so called victims all seem to have died quickly and the rate has speeded

up especially after the village becomes aware of the infection. Patients

infected with HIV can and should be able to live normal life spans subject

to early detection. The speed of the demise is directly related to the level

of support at the community level and that support depends on a much greater

awareness of HIV transmission.

Being HIV+ does not necessarily mean developing AIDS disease. When can we

start to believe that.

Sacking whistleblowing doctors is also criminally negligent behaviour and

communities should demand that doctor's reinstatement because he might just

have some good ideas about what to do.

When is India going to stop the expensive practice of buying essential

testing services from the private sector when it has the means to provide

standardised testing in most of its teaching hospitals.

It's time for the community in Jharkhand to get very angry and indignant

about the appalling lack of co-ordinated management of HIV support, care and

treatment programs.

Is it not a State of the Union of India. It should be a beneficiary of a

proportion of the NACO financing.

Any community based organisations who want to get involved in trying to make

a difference please send me an email and lets try to get the greater

involvement of positive people in generating solutions there.

Geoffrey

E-mail: <gheaviside@...>