'People-work'

  Has UNAIDS Been Caught Napping? Look who is Paying the Price for the UN’s Political Fence Sitting   I was hoping I would never have to write this. That no one would have to write this, ever. UNAIDS and civil society campaigners have had a special relationship of trust and collaboration. But now that relationship seems to have chipped. Irreparably, even.   Two shockingly opposite statements have emerged after the adoption of the 2016 Political Declaration on HIV and AIDS  by Member States of the UN at the recently concluded UN General Assembly Special Session last week.   Michel Sidibe, Executive Director of UNAIDS, was quoted in the New York Times  saying that he felt ‘the declaration was something to be proud of’.   In sharp contrast, campaigners from across the world have called the Political Declaration a ‘high level failure’. In  a scathing statement  issued by the global coalitions of civil society organisations,...

  HIV and Sexuality – Has India Missed the Bus?  HIV remains exceptional in that it carries the seemingly immutable burden of being synonymous with immoral behaviour. Open and safe conversations on sexual rights and freedoms in the context of both disease and pleasure should have been the method of decoupling HIV from prevailing notions of morality. India’s HIV programme over the past 25 years chose not to do this. In September 1998 , to the utter horror of HIV activists, the Supreme Court of India pronounced the following in a judgement – “AIDS is the product of undisciplined sexual impulse.” It was hearing the case of Mr. “X” v. Hospital “Z”. The appellant Mr. “X” was a person living with HIV whose confidentiality had been breached by hospital “Z”. The appellant sought damages for breach of confidentiality, which had led to his marriage being cancelled, and ostracism by his community. This judgement, till it was revoked in 2003 after an outcry from activists and la...

Dear Honourable Members of Parliament and Legislators, As part of the nationwide AIDS Momentum Campaign, we bring to your notice the grave concern of civil society members about the Government of India’s recent approach to our country’s HIV/AIDS prevention and care programme. More than 150 organisations across the country are of the strong view that any move by the government towards shrinking organisational and budgetary support to the AIDS response will lead to a reversal and upsurge of the epidemic among the most vulnerable groups and beyond.

The HIV response in India finds itself at a crossroad – a choice between consolidating gains and frittering them away into a resurgence of the epidemic. The struggle began when policy makers chose to ignore evidence and voices from the ground and almost announced the end of AIDS in India. Riding on the trend of fewer new HIV infections and disregarding all feedback from civil society frontline workers, the fourth phase of the government’s National AIDS Control Programme – NACP 4 – stated that the AIDS response will be integrated within the health system of India by the time the programme ends in 2017. By inference, a dedicated AIDS programme was no longer needed; and hence a fifth phase of the AIDS programme – NACP 5 – would be ruled out. Not only does NACP 4 assume and affirm that it will achieve its results, but it goes a step further to declare that the entire government health system will thereafter be in complete readiness to deliver HIV prevention and care services. Ana...

Since the early 1990's, the national AIDS response in India worked with the outlawed and almost won. Those who inhabited this response, called it the ‘HIV movement of India’, now 25 years since it began a proud and reflective group of individuals and institutions.  There is real fear that the low overall HIV prevalence rates cannot be sustained if the change makers lose steam.  That condom use cannot continue to do the trick without dignity of those most at risk is evident to those privy to the process of change so far. When the same National AIDS programme worked with pregnant women, it struggled for air. The AIDS programme’s history is as much a history of institutions as it is of individuals habiting them. It is as much a history of change as it is a history of stagnation.  It is as a much a history of new learning as it is a history of stoic denial of new thinking. While the programme achieved higher and higher condom use among hard...

Dear friends, now Vienna is done and dusted. At the blog  http:// ippfaids2010.blogspot.com/2010/ 07/ time-to-pull-plug-on-internatio nal-aids.html?spref=fb My dear friend and mentor Kevin Osborne says 'whisper it, its time to pull the plug off the international conferences' - please read it when you have the time. Its a voice of reason and experience c oming from deep within the vicinity of the epdemic just as much as the voices of those who have returned from the conference, some with an extended holiday thrown in thereafter to recover from the fatigue.  Its likely that the next 'bigger spectacle' will be held (in Delhi?) with complete aplomb as though none of these comments ever traversed the HIV world's cacophony. But its time to stop repeating the conferences that have long ceased to yield in proportion to the spend. Anyone monitoring the 'returns on investements'? Anyone taking stock of whether these dollars can be better invested? I a...