On 1st December of every year, people from all over the world come together to bring awareness about AIDS caused by the spread of HIV infection and When I think of a person who’s affected by AIDS I visualize him or her as the one who is secluded from family and society and discriminated regardless of the fact that their presence will do no harm to an individual. In India, discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS is common. Some government and private doctors refuse to treat patients who are HIV positive and others who treat, do not provide the best of treatments– and in some cases even refuse to touch the afflicted.
Apart from HIV-positive adults, there are innocent children who face discrimination too and its main cause is the lack of sensitivity and gross ignorance by society. In this day there are still those who regard children living with HIV as a misconception that the virus is contagious and would spread with direct contact. Since ages, people have an opinion that one can only get HIV through intercourse. But they forget the fact that the HIV transmission in most of the children happens through their mother.
According to a daily, last year a boy with HIV from Bishnupur, West Bengal, faced discrimination and was asked to leave his school. The information which was meant to be confidential was eventually leaked to other parents which worsened the situation. About a hundred parents had signed a petition that demanded the boy to leave the school. But this was not the end of it. Even the boy’s grandmother who taught Bangla (Bengali) at the school was asked to get her tests done to prove that she was “pure.” A similar incident occurred in the year 2013 in Amboli village of Surat when admission to 26 HIV positive woman was hindered by the non-HIV students and their parents as they feared that their children were not safe from the HIV affected children.
A recent incident that occurred on October 2016, when a 13-year-old girl was dragged out of the hostel of a central government in Odisha’s Kendrapara district because of the complaint by the students and their parents.
Examples like these disturb the HIV affected children both mentally and physically. It not only hinders the little one’s happiness but also demeans their inner soul.
This Worlds AIDS Day, Let us all bring a change by educating the ones who have little or no knowledge about AIDS. One can start by talking to our neighbors, friends and families– because knowledge shared is knowledge gained.
