India's Invisible Poison

Their research also shows that HIV has devastating effects on the relationships as well as the economics of India's traditionally family-based society. For each one HIV victim, a large number of other lives are ruined. On average, each victim is the direct breadwinner for four other people and indirectly a provider for many more. Money and human relationships are cut off for children, spouses, younger brothers and sisters, mothers, fathers and other relatives.

So what can be done about AIDS in India? There were some signs last month that the Indian government will do more to cope with it. Well, everyone knows what needs to be done. Ignorance and illiteracy need to be reduced; the status of women improved; poverty reduced -- the poverty which drives men away from their villages and their wives, to earn money in the city. And with poverty, the privation of the lowest castes must go. Attitudes must change, and there needs to be more information, publicity, education. There need to be more doctors, more nurses, more beds. It all takes money. The Indian government spends only 0.7 per cent of its small GDP on health and the central agency, NACO, has to depend on aid from the US, UK, the UN and the World Bank to the tune of about [pounds]40m per annum. This is about 4p per Indian, or [pounds]4 per HIV victim.

Clearly the thing that could and would make the biggest immediate impact within the money available is practical, on-the-ground work, done by dedicated, selfless volunteers like those of AAG, working in the schools, brothels, drug dens and jails. Their numbers could be multiplied by pump-priming money and better social recognition. I would give every one of them a medal.

Alex Ninian is a travel writer whose articles on India and other countries have appeared in numerous British and American publications.

AIDS - THE GRIM TOTAL

* It is estimated that there are 34.3 million people living with either AIDS or the HIV virus at the end of 1999.

* Seventy per cent - 24.5 million - of these live in sub-Saharan Africa. 8.6 per cent of the adult population of sub-Saharan Africa is HIV positive.

* 520,000 or 1.5 per cent live in western Europe.

* 900,000 or 3 per cent, live in North America.

* The proportion of HIV adults (aged 15-49) is 0.11 per cent in the UK; 0.61 in the US.

Source: World Health Organisation; UNAIDS.

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