Saving India's Women from HIV/AIDS

Chatterjee's article provides an overview of the impact of HIV/AIDS in India where the combination of HIV/AIDS and gender bias create a particularly difficult situation for women. The epidemic is occurring where "millions of women remain trapped in a social-cultural context that denies them information, medical treatment, and protection against unsafe sex, which accounts for 85%

of HIV infections in the country."

Chatterjee's article seeks to bring attention to World AIDS Day held December 1, 2004. She offers a story of Geeta, a thirty year old woman, who contracts HIV/AIDS from her husband. When it is clear that she's ill, her husband refuses to help her get the
medical attention she needs. When he realises she has AIDS, he throws her, and their 8 year daughter out of the house.

According to Chatterjee, a newly formed Network of HIV-positive People (Haryana), is accepting members who share the same story.

So far there are 80 members, "half of whom are widows and married women who contracted HIV from their husband, and then were

blamed, shamed and
finally thrown out of their family homes."

Geeta's story helps illustrate Chataterjee's point of just how vulnerable women are. India's Ministry of Health and Family Welfare

forecast an increase in the levels of HIV infection "among Indian women, who, largely monogamous themselves, have virtually no

control over their husbands' sexual behaviour."

According to the article, brochures providing information about Voluntary Counselling and Testing Centre (VCTCs) and Prevention of

Parent to Child Transmission of HIV/AIDS [PPTCTs] are generally found in district hospitals and the offices of non-governmental organisations and international agencies. "They are not reaching village primary health centres." Even if this information were to reach its target market, the messages would need to be "very simple" while avoiding technical terms and meaningless acronyms.

According to Lakshman Singh, President of the Network, if the Network is to be effective in reaching people, it must first reach people with a general health discussion that gradually moves to the subject of sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS.