Plagues,
Pestilences and Diseases
India: Massive increase in HIV/AIDS amongst gay and
transgender Indians
by Staff Writers
New Delhi (AFP) Aug 24, 2011
India hit by massive surge in the rate of infection among
homosexual and transgender people, experts say.
This anomaly was highlighted last month by the country's Health
Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad in a now notorious speech at an AIDS
conference that will be remembered for other reasons.
Azad went on to call homosexuality "a disease which has come from
other countries" and "unnatural", in comments widely condemned by
gay rights activists and AIDS workers.
At the Pahal Foundation in the northern state of Haryana, which
provides free HIV tests, condoms and counselling services to gay
and transgender people, project manager Maksoom Ali says he faces
a constant battle against ignorance. Most gay men, fearing
homophobia, are forced to hide their sexual activity, and others
have no idea about the dangers of unprotected intercourse, he
said.
"Many people think that men having sex with men cannot get HIV and
that's one reason why (homosexual and transgender) people have a
lot of unsafe sex," Ali told AFP.
The country's National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) estimates
that 7.3 percent of India's homosexual population lives with HIV,
compared with 0.31 percent of the total adult population.
The UN AIDS agency estimated that around a third of men who have
sex with men in India fail to access services like HIV testing,
sex education and free condom supplies.
Many of the people who use Pahal's services are low-paid factory
workers, labourers, or sex workers like 25-year-old Sanam who
first came to the centre three years ago.
Sanam, a transgender whose original name was Sushil Kumar Pandey,
told AFP she knew nothing about sexually transmitted diseases when
she entered the sex trade.
"I never used to take it seriously, we used to do it without
condoms," she said.
She learnt about HIV/AIDS only after visiting the Pahal premises.
"They first conducted a blood test on me, then they told me about
HIV, what it is, how it spreads. Because of that I always use
condoms," she said.
Although the Indian government has committed funds to HIV-fighting
organisations that work with the gay and transgender community,
many NGOs say that financing falls short.
The Pahal Foundation says it treats 50 percent more people than it
has budgeted for.
Gay rights activist and UNAIDS technical officer for sexual
minorities, Ashok Row Kavi, said that authorities lack a true
awareness of the problem in the gay community.
"We don't have a proper denominator for the number of MSM (men
having sex with men), and that number is much higher than what we
are willing to accept," he told AFP.
"It's very worrying because hardly four percent of the
(government) money for fighting HIV is coming to MSM groups," he
added.
Attitudes to homosexuality are slowly changing in India, although
it is still often viewed as a mental illness or something shameful
to be ignored, particularly in rural areas.
Two years ago, a landmark Delhi High Court ruling decriminalised
homosexuality, which was illegal under a 150-year-old British
colonial law that banned "carnal intercourse against the order of
nature".
Conviction carried a fine and maximum 10-year jail sentence.
But many gay and transgender sex workers who spoke to AFP said
they continue to face verbal and physical abuse on a regular
basis.
Rupali, a 24-year-old transgender sex worker whose original name
was Lalit Sharma, said she feared for her safety nearly every day.
"There are people who turn up drunk, local goons, we have to
convince them that there is such a frightening disease going
around, there can be a problem like this, so use a condom," she
told AFP.
But sometimes, she said, customers used force to pressure her and
other sex workers to have unprotected sex.
Most of all she feared the police. "They force us to have sex,
they take our money and then they beat us up," she said.