The state-run AIDS Control Society in the southern Indian state of Kerala will reserve one government job for HIV/AIDS-positive applicants — the first time I’ve ever heard of a quota for people with a particular illness. The employee will help build government sensitivity to the disease and improve communication with its sufferers, and aims to overcome the powerful stigma of AIDS in India.
From the Times of India:
“Right now in Kerala, we have what is called ‘drop-in centres’. They work to facilitate grouping or association of people with HIV/AIDS. The belief is that when they come together, they would get to share their problems and it would be a great relaxing factor,” Titus said.
But there are thousands of HIV affected who still keep themselves out of these collectives, for fear of being identified and perhaps ostracised by larger society which still sees HIV and AIDS patients as dangerous and dissolute.
“The aim of reserving the post is to reach out to them. We believe that a lifestyle modification may be possible if somebody who understands their problem better is in charge. It will also help us send out our message in a better way as the channel of communication will be better,” Kerala State Aids Control Society (KSACS) project director and special secretary, health, Usha Titus said.
Of Kerala’s 32 million people, 25,000 are believed to be HIV-positive. According to the CIA World Factbook, 310,000 Indians die of the disease each year, and India as a whole has 5.1 million HIV/AIDS sufferers — about 0.9 per cent of the population. In contrast, the infection rate is about 0.6 per cent in the U.S.A. and 0.2 per cent in the U.K. And 39 per cent in Swaziland.
Still, some argue that if there’s a reserved job for AIDS victims, there should be one for people with other diseases should too — and India has no shortage of those. Sixty per cent of the world’s leprosy sufferers live in India, one in ten Indians has chronic kidney disease, and “tuberculosis is the largest single cause of adult illness and death from a communicable disease in India,” according to the World Bank. Not to mention anthrax, cholera, typhus, hepatitis A and B, malaria, the plague (yes, THAT plague), leptospirosis and other waterborne diseases, japanese encephalitis, typhoid fever, dengue fever, elephantiasis, leishmaniasis, polio, rabies…
Image via The Hindu.
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