M A I N   N E W S

She is HIV+ but faces no stigma
Payal Pruthi
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 1
For Amarjot Kaur, resident of a village in Fatehgarh Sahib, a mention of her HIV status invites a simple resignation to the dictates of destiny. Like any other HIV Positive, she narrates how the virus was passed on to her by her husband, a truck driver, who died two years back.

With a face that gives away no emotion even when she confesses that her three daughters, the youngest being just one and a half years old, are also HIV Positive, Amarjot still remains a socially accepted woman in her village.

In the city to attend the CII awareness session on HIV/AIDS, her face lights up only when she talks of how the entire village has socially accepted her and the likes of her. Discrimination, stigma, social ostracism are words that sound alien to her. I try to twist the words and coax her to know of a related incident but in vain. Instead pat comes the reply: “I stay with my in-laws who take care of the children while I go out to work”.

After a pause, she says her two elder daughters go to a local school and are treated like other students. She is joined in her opinion by Surinder Kaur, another infected patient from the same village, where the dreaded disease has had a positive fallout.

Accompanied by Amarjeet Singh, the District Co-ordinator of Voluntary Health Association of Punjab (VAHP), were also young orphaned HIV Positive children, the parents of whom had HIV/AIDS. While some of them are being brought up by their uncles others are being taken care of by the grandparents and are not ostracised in the school.

Having worked with such people in various villages of Fatehgarh Sahib, Mr Amarjeet Singh says the old value system of joint families is sustaining those who are HIV Positive, including the children. He then goes on to add that it is not the disease or discrimination that these people are fighting but the right to live respectably even with the disease.

With no proper access to treatment, Amarjot reveals, she has resorted to ‘Desi Cure’. Like her many others, have gone to far off places like Kerala looking for a miracle cure. Umpteen rounds of the PGI, have not helped and she has not received a penny of the widow’s pension. The medicines are available free of cost, but the not easily accessible. Working as a housemaid, Amarjot also wants that some job opportunities should also be generated for them.

While, the opening of the ART centres in Jalandhar and Amritsar and the CIIs initiative to generate jobs for HIV Positive people has raised some hope among them, Amarjeet still feels that the resources have to trickle down to the grassroot level. As for now fear of abandonment or discrimination is the last thing on Amarjot’s mind.

(Names of the HIV positive patients have been changed.)