India ignores Plight of AIDS Orphans

[Guest guest]

India ignores plight of generation of Aids orphans

Randeep Ramesh in Vijayawada and Mac

Wednesday March 23, 2005. The Guardian

An explosion of cases is forcing children out of school and on to the streets

or into work to support the very young and the very old

Samarajyam Dandam's eyes blink and fill slowly with tears as she gazes upon

the toothpick-thin form of her mother in the dim light of their palm-thatched

hut.

Coughing and too weak to speak, 25-year-old Naccharamma became HIV positive

while working as a prostitute in the industrial city of Vijayawada on the edge

of south India's tobacco and cotton belt in the state of Andhra Pradesh. A few

years ago she nursed her dying husband, who succumbed to Aids. Now

tuberculosis fills her lungs.

Once Naccharamma dies, her family say they will wash their hands of the two

girls, who are too young to marry off and too small for manual work.

At the entrance to their home Naccharamma's 65-year-old grandmother is telling

anyone who will listen that Samarajyam, nine, and her five-year-old sister,

Krupajyothi, are too big a burden and that they will have to leave the hut

once her granddaughter dies.

Already forced to cut classes and beg for food, Samarajyam is painfully aware

of what is to come. " I know my mother will die. My family are all cheaters and

we know they will send us out. "

Like Africa during the last decade, where widespread migrant labour,

prostitution and a stigma about sexually transmitted diseases caused an

explosion in Aids cases, there are concerns that a generation of parentless

children are growing up in India in the wake of the disease.

Yet their plight goes virtually unnoticed in India, where aid agencies warn

that children affected by Aids are being ignored and increasingly left to fend

for themselves.

" We are seeing an exponential rise in the number of children who have no

mother and father because of Aids. Stigma of the disease means children from

families affected are sometimes denied an education, sometimes pushed on to

the street. Often they are just forced into child labour, " says ,

HIV project director for Andhra Pradesh with the charity World Vision.

" Even orphanages find reasons not to take them in. "

There are no government figures in the country for the number of children

affected by Aids, but experts say that more than a million children under 15

have lost one or both parents to Aids.

India's HIV epidemic is at a critical stage. Officially about 700,000 Indians

already have Aids and 5 million are infected with HIV, the virus that causes

it. India ranks second only to South Africa in terms of infections.

But many believe that the disease is silently spreading through the country's

1 billion people. The CIA predicts 25 million Indians could be infected by

2010.

The reason, say experts, is a historic indifference to public health - India

spends less than 20 cents (11p) a head on HIV prevention and treatment, a

third of the spending in Thailand and a ninth of that in Uganda - and weak

political commitment to combating Aids.

Although the new government, controlled by Gandhi of the Congress party,

has increased public health spending by 25% and sports stars such as the

cricketer Rahul Dravid are beginning to front condom campaigns, many worry

that the country has passed a tipping point in infection rates.

Last year Feachem, head of the UN-backed Global Fund to Fight Aids,

Tuberculosis and Malaria, said he believed official statistics underestimated

the prevalence of HIV. " The Indian epidemic is on an African trajectory, " he

said. " Today we are not making a difference. The virus is winning. "

The losers appear to be the country's youth. Children are first forced to

leave school to care for sick parents. Once orphaned they are then consigned

to work to replace their parents' income.

Sixteen-year-old Anjali Kolukapalla, whose mother, Rani, died last year of

Aids, wakes up at four in the morning to sweep the streets of Vijayawada so

that her nine-year-old sister, Kumari, can go to school. She earns 1,800

rupees a month (£22) and she and her sister cook, eat and sleep in one

room. " There is nobody to look after us. That is why I have to work. "

The emotional strain caused by such trauma has left deep psychological scars

on teenagers forced to grow old long before their time. The only photograph on

the walls of Anjali's home is of her mother. " My father was a truck driver who

went with other women. He died and he gave my mother the disease. He killed

her. "

On the surface Vijayawada is booming. Smooth, wide roads, flashy cars and new

hotels attest to its growth. Sited at the crossing of rail tracks and two

national highways, it has benefited from the country's bubbling economy.

But there are disturbing signs that Aids is silently killing off the supposed

labour force of the future. In India only 0.9% of the adult population is

registered as HIV-positive, but in this part of the country it is closer to

4%.

One worrying phenomenon that has emerged on India's demographic landscape is

the child-headed family, where HIV infects and kills the entire middle-aged

generation. The end result is that the very young end up looking after the

very old.

Venkatesh Konda, 15, lost his father, a rickshaw puller, and his mother, a

daily wage labourer, in the last 24 months to Aids. Venkatesh, who cannot read

or write, now works in a local cotton mill 30 miles from Vijayawada, starting

to haul sacks at 8pm and finishing 12 hours later. For this backbreaking

labour he earns 50 rupees (60p) a day. He is the only breadwinner in a family

that consists of himself and his elderly grandparents. " It is very tiring and

my back hurts but how else will we live? My grandparents are too old so they

cannot work. I come back from work in the morning and sleep. I am too tired to

do anything else. "

The spread of HIV also threatens to shake two of India's most resilient

institutions: arranged marriage and the dowry. Abandoned by their extended

families, orphans find themselves without the money or social network to

marry. The stain of Aids also marks them out as a new class of untouchables.

Fifteen-year-old Suresh Desari had already been forced to leave school and

work on a construction site after his father died of Aids. It was when he

returned from work a year ago that he found his mother dead. After the grief

subsided, his first thoughts were for his elder sister, Sujata. " Without my

parents around I do not know how to get my sister married, " he says as tears

roll down Sujata's cheeks.

Officials in Andhra Pradesh, a state of 80 million people which has the second

highest rates of infection in India, say that more cash is needed. Andhra

Pradesh gets 200m rupees (£2.5m) a year from central government for the fight

against Aids.

" We also get money from international agencies but we need more to scale up

the programmes to deal with all this, " said K Damayanthi, director of the

Andhra Pradesh state Aids control society. " There's a big opportunity to

reverse the epidemic and if we do not do it now the chance will not be

available in the future. "

· About 5.1 million people are infected with HIV in India, second only to

South Africa

· Infected people make up less than 1% of population

· The first case of HIV in India was diagnosed among sex workers in Chennai,

Tamil Nadu, in 1986

· Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Manipur states account for three-quarters of the

country's estimated HIV cases

· One sixth of all new Aids cases in the world occur in India, 30% of which

are women

· Last year the World Bank warned that India could have 5m new HIV infections

every year within 30 years if condom use does not increase

· Britain's international development department estimates that two adults

become infected with HIV every minute in India

http://www.guardian.co.uk/india/story/0,12559,1443611,00.html