Untitled Document

Living with HIV

Life after HIV/AIDS
General secretary of the Manipur Network of Positive People Sorokhaibam Thoibi Devi has individually approached and coaxed 230 HIV-positive women in Thoubal town to declare their positive status, join the network, and learn to re-live their lives Read more

Discriminated to death
A young Indian couple in Saudi Arabia, a 15-year-old boy in Ahmedabad, a farm labourer in Surat and many others have committed suicide to escape the stigma and discrimination that HIV-positive people face. Why does discrimination continue despite crores of rupees spent on awareness campaigns in the past two decades? Read more

“I am afraid; how do I break the news?”
Twenty-year-old Ibungo cannot tell his parents or his partners that he has HIV because in Manipur, as in the rest of India, men who have sex with men are liable to be clapped up in jail. Read more

Voices of vulnerable women
Walabai battled despair and discrimination after her husband died of AIDS and she was found to be HIV-positive. But she learnt to cope: “I would like to tell all persons who are positive that they must live well and not get depressed.” Read more

Zarina: ‘We need more than information’
Zarina is just one of thousands of HIV-positive people caught between a government that cannot provide care and treatment to all, a private sector that is expensive and swarming with quacks, and NGOs that are driven by their own agendas Read more

What has changed for people living with HIV?
Many experts feel that it’s time we moved beyond HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns and began seriously tackling the practical considerations of getting medicines to patients. Awareness is important, but it’s useless if we cannot provide the medicines Read more

The missing face of AIDS
Yesu Babu of Vambay Colony in Vijayawada is 12. He has lost both his parents to AIDS. His younger brother is positive. There are almost 2 million AIDS orphans like him in India. But the national and global response to the HIV/AIDS crisis in India has virtually ignored children Read more

A positive approach
Jahnabi Goswami is the first woman in the northeast to declare her HIV status. She has lived with HIV -- and the accompanying discrimination -- for ten years. In 2002 she set up the Assam Network of Positive People to build the capacities of people living with the virus Read more

Living with AIDS in Orissa
People with HIV/AIDS in Orissa are ostracised and mistreated by their families, community and the medical fraternity. These conditions have prompted the formation of Orissa's first registered association of people living with AIDS, the Kalinga Positive People's Association Read more

Fighting the stigma of being HIV-positive
Women in Karnataka talk about the stigma and discrimination they face because of their HIV-positive status Read more

Fear and loathing in god's own country
Akshara (8) and Ananthu (6) have been boycotted at school and in their village of Kodiyoor in Kerala because they are HIV-positive. Following pressure from several quarters, they have now been allotted a separate room at school in which to study, and a new teacher Read more