What is is that we can Do?

Summary of keynote address by Shabana Azmi, India,
delivered at the Closing Session, 10 October 2001.

"People with AIDS deserve to die because - they are immoral." "Only pimps, commercial sex workers, truck drivers and homosexual get AIDS - not me." "In a country where millions are dying of malaria and TB, what's all this fuss about AIDS?""In an overpopulated country perhaps this is nature's way of dealing with the population explosion." And so on and so forth. Ladies and gentlemen we are in the fifteenth year of this epidemic and there are still people amongst us - medical doctors, politicians and people in the judiciary who think and act like this. I can only hang my head in shame.

Only recently a radio program on sexual health was banned by a Delhi magistrate because it was considered immoral. An entire village in Uttar Pradesh in India was not owed to vote because one person in the village was ostracised. No electoral officer would risk putting up election booths in the village because one person was HIV positive. Every day we hear stories about medical doctors refusing to attend HIV patients.

The horror stories are endless. The ignorance, the lack of awareness coupled with the stigma attached to the disease lead to unbelievable human rights violations. There have been instances of the victims tied up in chains and thrown into dungeons like they used to do with lepers in the past. This is because in our hearts we do not believe it can happen to us - we are still in a state of denial. We need to internalise the fact that you and I are all vulnerable. That HIV/AIDS is not about somebody out there, it is about us and we need to do something about it right now. Our weakness and inability are its strengths. HIV/AIDS feeds and multiplies on our ignorance and recklessness. Poverty makes it prosper, gender inequalities give it fertile soil. A sense of division between human beings as nations, classes and colours make it powerful. HIV/AIDS uses the chinks in our armour and makes us vulnerable and weak.

The world population is a little over six billion. Thirty six million people already have been infected with HIV. Today in India according to official estimates there are 3.5 million HIV positive cases - the highest number in the world - not in terms of percentage but in numbers because a rise of 0.1 percent would add half a million more to the total numbers. An HIV positive person's life gets shortened, its quality compromised with even a minor cough or cold portending a frightening end.