Anuradha mascarenhasAsha Ramayya cannot stop smiling. Living with HIV for 13 years, this national advocacy officer of the Indian Network of People Living with HIV has helped bring a change in Bagalkot district of Karnataka. “Five years ago, it was very difficult to talk to a positive person. Today they are talking HIV openly and what’s more even helping each other battle the disease,’’ says Ramayya. So when Karnataka chief minister H D Kumaraswamy took up Ramayya’s invitation to visit Bagalkot district, it was with a purpose. He wanted to learn more about this model district that has helped her people wake up to the AIDS challenge. His stay with a family infected with HIV at Ingalgi village, put the much-needed spotlight on the rural HIV epidemic. There were many stories. Take the case of 38-year-old Kalavathy, a peer educator with Chaitanya Mahila Sangha. She comes from a family of eight children. As the eldest daughter, she was dedicated to goddess Yellama as a devdasi when she was nine. Pregnant at 14 and infected with HIV later, she is now a peer educator who is supervising other devdasis to take HIV prevention messages to their community. Like Kalavathy there are more than 4,000 devdaasis in the Sangha, says Usha Rani, regional manager of the Corridors project that is working for the welfare of sex workers. “There were lots of misconceptions about devdasis. They were not allowed in any public functions,’’ she says. But then projects like India Canada Collaborative HIV/AIDS Project (ICHAP) started in 2001 to address the rural epidemic.THE project has now ended with a sense of accomplishment. Says Parineeta Bhattacharjee, additional project director of the ICHAP, “here is a model district in Karnataka, one of the six states with high prevalence rates of HIV that has successfully implemented an HIV prevention and care programme. It is the only district where all its 611 villages have been covered with various AIDS intervention programmes.’’ According to Dr Reynold Washington who is with ICHAP and the Karnataka Promotion Health Trust, Bagalkot “has woken the government to the harsh reality that yes, sex work and HIV is not relegated to the cities alone.’’About 5 lakh people live with HIV/AIDS in Karnataka and the numbers are growing in rural areas. Half of the state’s 27 districts are high-prevalence districts. Several of these, particularly in the north, have prevalence levels as high as 2.5per cent. According to the Karnataka State AIDS Prevention Society, HIV prevalence in the state is 1.56 per cent— nearly three times the national rate. In Bagalkot district the prevalence rate is 3.2 per cent. The rate may be high but Bagalkot’s people are now ready to talk about it, courtesy the project. For instance the concept of Parent Family Members Speaker Bureau has worked very well, says Nagendra K M of Jeevan Jyoti-Bagalkot district network of positive persons. “At present we have 3,092 positive persons in the network but the stigma has reduced. In these bureau level programmes we have interactive sessions with the family members and talk to them about the disease. It is a wonderful experience as people really open up and talk about issues,’’ says Nagendra. Even as these strategies have worked with a lot of networking among groups, it is the village health committees that have also been entrusted with a crucial role. Says Ningappa Hallada, member of the Ingalgi village health committee, “for nearly 10 years we tried to grapple with the problem trying to understand what HIV was about. We got in the clutches of all kinds of quacks and miracle cures. Today in our village HIV positive people are benefiting from Anti Retroviral Therapy treatment and yes, many of them are back to work’’.
