UP's first network of HIV+ people

[Guest guest]

UP's first network of HIV+ people

UTTAR PRADESH now has its first network of people living with HIV The group,

Positive People for Care and Support (PPCS), launched on World AIDS Day

(December 1) last year, has 63 members. And, sixty per cent of them are women,

aged between 30 and 40 years. Ninety per cent of these women have already lost

their husbands to the deadly virus.

PPCS president Anil Kumar Singh, who was in Lucknow on Saturday and Sunday to

attend a national consultation meet of the World Social Forum, told Hindustan

Times that only 14 members had come out in the open; the remaining said they

wouldn't like their identities to be disclosed.

" In fact, " he added, " one of them, a woman, even addressed the media during the

PPCS launch. She lost her husband a year back and her elder son six months ago

to AIDS. Her second child, also a boy, is also HIV+ " .

Singh, who is based in Kushinagar district, also became the organisational

partner with AIDS Care Watch, an international campaign aimed at `staying alive

with HIV' until every positive person had an access to the anti-retroviral drugs

(ARVs). (The campaign has about 100 organisational partners like PPCS.)

Singh, a law graduate from Allahabad University, said he was inspired to form a

network of HIV+ people during his visit to Thiruvananthapuram in 2003 to

participate in a national network of sex workers. " I had earlier been to Kolkata

in 2002 to take part in the 'Anandostav' and seen how people living with HIV

lived life with dignity. "

He was in charge of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh for conducting a baseline

survey of red light areas in the north India a few years back. During his

interaction with sex workers in the two states, he came across many people

infected with the virus.

" We had been fighting for the rights for sex workers. I realised why not work

for the HIV+ people to get them some rights, too. "

PPCS, said Singh, is an attempt to provide care and support to people living

with HIV and save them from getting stigmatized for the infection. “It appears

unlikely that ARVs for all sex million (who need them)-or ‘universal access’

will be achieved before at least 2008.”

In the interviewing years, many people who need the drugs today will fall sick

and die, and be replaced by further millions as they too progress to the stage

where ARVs are needed. In order to keep these millions alive while waiting for

ARVs access, care, support, treatment, including readily available non-ARV

medicines, he said.

The network wants to ensure comprehensive care and support-like better nutrition

and availability of drugs to treat opportunistic infections, and remove stigma

for them within the health settings-to all HIV +ve people in the State. PPCS

also wants to establish a home for these people.

Source: 7th March 2005, Hindustan Times.

Javed Abbas

E-maill: <javedabbas_2004@...>