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Threat More Devastating than Disease By Ranjit Devraj INDIA Medical tests conducted last year proved conclusively that Kaushalya, 29, did not have HIV. But by then, just the threat of having contracted the virus had destroyed her social life and forced her to abort her child. Tragedy struck Kaushalya three years ago when her husband, Ranbir Singh, who drove buses for the nationalised Delhi Transport Corporation, fell ill with pulmonary tuberculosis. He was refused treatment at the prestigious state-run Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences at Rohtak by doctors who suspected he had HIV. Singh went home to his village of Chochi, 80 kms west of the New Delhi, in the neighbouring state of Haryana. Left untreated, Singh's condition rapidly deteriorated and he died. Just the mere speculation that he had contracted HIV proved to be more socially deadly than anything else for Kaushalya and her family - and indeed for the entire village of Chochi. Though
it was never medically proven that Singh had, in fact, contracted
HIV, government doctors advised Kaushalya to abort the foetus of
the six-month-old boy she was carrying. Kaushalya and her family have not been able to shake off the stigma even though no one in her family or in the village of Chochi tested positive for the virus in tests they were encouraged to take by the administration. The tests, and reports of the tests in the media, only served to worsen the social reputation of the community, and, Chochi's proximity to the national capital did not help. Hordes of newspaper reporters from the big national dailies, descended on Kaushalya's home and sensationalised the case without bothering to authenticate the facts. Before long, the little dusty hamlet was being described as "India's first HIV/AIDS village,'' in headlines of stories, which suggested that 'quacks' operated in the village administering injections with unsterilised hypodermic needles and the spread of the virus also was linked to barbers who used old-fashioned cut-throat razors. The wider stigma created by the media's sensational reporting has been so pervasive that even today, no one from the surrounding villages of Haryana dares to marry any resident of Chochi. "Men
from our village are regularly passed over for jobs and even buses
that ply the highway do not stop for us,'' said Asad Singh, headman
of the village. More than 40 of the villagers have signed separate affidavits claiming how they have been discriminated against, or have suffered only because of their association with Chochi and its undeserved reputation. "What we are asking for is not money, but an acknowledgement from the government that it made a mistake that has shamed us and cost us our reputations,'' Kaushalya said. "The manner in which the civil administration and the medical authorities failed to perform their professional and ethical duties proves that they are ill-equipped to handle situations like the one at Chochi,'' said Purushothaman Mulloli, convener of the JAC. "Even if Ranbir(Kaushalya's husband) had actually died of HIV/AIDS, basic, internationally accepted guidelines concerning confidentiality were violated with the result that the entire village was branded AIDS-affected and the residents socially ostracised,'' he said. |
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