New Delhi, April 8
People living with HIV/AIDS are now intending to take their fight against the disease beyond the anti-retroviral (ARV) line of control. They plan to give it a sting that will ensure that their issues and problems are heard by those who matter the most: Policy-makers and politicians.

With sheer numbers on their side, 52 lakh as per the official statistics, HIV positive people think they are capable of making a political assertion like any minority community. And together with their family members and friends, they feel they have the much-required qualification of turning into a sizeable vote bank for any political party.

As a first step before making it into a nationwide movement, the Uttar Pradesh Network for People Living with HIV/AIDS plans to take this up on an experimental basis during the ongoing UP elections. “HIV positive people in Utter Pradesh will support the political party which thinks about us,” network’s president Naresh Yadav said, adding that people living with HIV/AIDS comprised 0.23 per cent of the UP’s population as per the government statistics.

Yadav, who was here for the conclusion of the first-ever national symposium of editors and senior journalists of 11 northern Hindi speaking states on HIV/AIDS, said the network would soon issue a statement, making clear its intentions of supporting only that political group or person who promises to raise their problems and issues in the new legislative assembly.

Under the awareness project “Sanchetna” by the Udayan Sharma Foundation and the Samayak Foundation along with the National Aids Control Organisation, journalists were sensitised on issues related to HIV/AIDS through a series of 10 workshops organised in different cities of north India

“In terms of figures, the number of people living with HIV/AIDS in UP is around 4.5 lakh. Taking into account an average of at least four members in an affected person’s family, there would be around 18 to 20 lakh people in Utter Pradesh, of whom a sizeable number would also be actual voters, who will respond to our call,” Yadav told The Tribune.

If the HIV positive people decide to take this fight to the national level, it can have a much larger impact. As per official NACO figures, in India close to 5.2 million or 52 lakh people are living with HIV/AIDS .

It is the unending struggle for the much-essential ARV therapy to fight the disease and general insensitivity and widespread ignorance towards their social, psychological, economic and health problems that has given rise to the need to turn HIV/AIDS into a political agenda.

With a large section of society still remaining prisoners of ignorance, myths, misconceptions, people living with HIV and AIDS continue to suffer from stigma and discrimination. In the past, there have also been several cases of ill-treatment, violence, humiliation and injustice against them.

Quoting the instance when an HIV positive person, Jahnavi Goswami, president of the Network of HIV Positive Persons in Assam, had sought a Congress ticket to fight elections and was subsequently refused, Yadav said the political leadership in India needs to be more sensitive towards issues related to affected persons.