Back in the late 1980s, the acronym still freshly evoked that strange, intense fear of the unknown바카라a biological version of xenophobia. And the knee-jerk response: banishment, ostracism, or their medical variants. It was as good as incarceration for the man they called 바카라Goa바카라s Patient Zero바카라. This May, we mark 25 years since Dominic D바카라Souza died. Sadly, we cannot say the stigmatisation brought on by the letters AIDS and HIV has ended. Dominic바카라s battle against prejudice, discrimination and ostracism of patients in Indian society has not yet been won. Far from it. Just recently, an acquaintance of mine reached out to me seeking help. He had been diagnosed as HIV-positive. He managed somehow to keep it under wraps for a bit but when it was no longer possible to hide it, the discrimination started at his workplace. They didn바카라t fire him but they made it so difficult for him to survive that he finally resigned. I don바카라t want to reveal his identity but he바카라s a creative artist바카라very sensitive and totally shattered by what바카라s happened. He desperately needed counselling. That바카라s the way the cookie crumbles still.
It바카라s so stark you can바카라t miss it. Patients of other terminal illnesses, like cancer, receive a natural compassion from society. In the case of those diagnosed with AIDs, there is only repulsion. As if the physical pain and the mental anguish of imminent death are not enough. I often wondered how two diseases produced such radically opposite reactions, even though each is equally serious. The penny dropped with an analogy: who are the only other victims who, paradoxically, find themselves at the receiving end of prejudice? Victims of rape, of course. I realised the answer lay in our society바카라s deeply conflicted perceptions of sex. Repressed desire at the personal end, turned to a cultivated disdain and stigma at the social level. Being infected with the HIV virus is an indication of sexual transgression. Perversely, so is rape often read as such. So the victim becomes the outcast.
Of course, there바카라s one area where positive changes have indeed taken place. When D바카라Souza was battling prejudice in the late 바카라80s and early 바카라90s바카라after being quarantined in a tuberculosis ward for 64 days with an HIV diagnosis바카라there were few laws to protect him against such injustice. Over the years, however, that lacuna has been partly filled. Last month, Parliament passed the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) Prevention and Control Bill, 2017바카라so we at least have a legal promise that equal rights will be ensured for those infected with AIDS and HIV. It criminalises various forms of discrimination and permits sufferers the right to confidentiality. To quote from the Bill, it prohibits 바카라denial, termination, discontinuation or unfair treatment with regard to employment, education establishments, healthcare services, residing or renting property or standing for public or private office바카라. Such legal support is very important, even if not sufficient. As we have seen in the case of my acquaintance who faced it recently, unless the stigma itself goes, society will find ways of working through the loopholes. (In his case, they couldn바카라t legally terminate his employment but they socially boycotted him).
