14/03/2016
HIV is a lesser evil.
Much lesser compared to patriotic bigotry and religious fanaticism. But while we hail the social viruses that ambush us, we curse the biological virus and stigmatize the infected.
So we want Akshara, a B.A. Psychology student of the Wadihuda Institute of Research and Advanced Studies, Kannur, to leave the college hostel because she is an HIV carrier; a status passed on to her by her parents.
A bright student who aspires to become an IAS officer, she only made her HIV status known to the college management and to friends. While friends and hostel mates extended care and support to her, the management preferred to keep it a secret.
But a few weeks back, when some parents confronted the college principal with the question, "should our children live with an AIDS patient," the principal, instead of conscientizing the parents that HIV won’t get transmitted through shaking hands or sharing telephone, office, cup and cutlery or living in the same room or hugging, suggested Akshara leave the hostel. He even told her that the virus "transmits during night."
One can pardon the ignorance of the principal, a Zoology teacher for the past 30 years. I've come across many doctors who have astonished me with their ignorance about HIV.
However, Akshara broke the shell of lies about HIV and came out in the public. That made the difference. The college management was forced to revoke its stance, following the intervention of the district collector, on March 10.
This is the not the first act of unabashed stigmatization against an HIV+ person in Kerala. It is the latest. (Hope it is the last.)
And it leads us to many disturbing questions.
Why didn’t the State Human Rights Commission, the departments of health and education and, most importantly, the Kerala State AIDS Control Society (KSACS) intervene in the matter? The officers earn their bread from the tax-payers' money. And they are paid to act.
More alarming was the selective blindness of the mainstream media.
How many millions of rupees have been spent through KSACS to disseminate factual information about HIV /AIDS, and to conscientize people about the disease? What have the NGOs -- working with the public money or foreign aid-- been doing all these years? What message has been conveyed? Why this literate society is so illiterate about HIV/ AIDS? Where has all the money gone?
How many of us know that HIV is not that easily transmittable as Hepatitis-B? And why do we, while keeping a Hepatitis patient at home, want to throw an HIV carrier out of the society? Is it because we attach a tag of immorality to HIV?
If so, how moralistic are we?
The fact that the probability of HIV –transmission through unprotected sex is less than half-a –percent and the ground reality that more than 90 percent of HIV transmission in Kerala happened through sex, rip our mask of morality into shreds.
And we stand naked. Bare down to our bones.
(Photo credit: jacilluch via Foter.com / CC BY-SA Trygve.u via Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA)