Special Coverage
-
- Election 2008
- Full local and national coverage, profiles, blogs and more.
-
- Breeding for Bucks
- In an undercover investigation, Free Press reporter Selena Hinds and photojournalist Mike Aporius explore Manitoba's rampant backyard breeder problem.
-
- Blue Bomber Report
- Explore breaking Bomber news and archived stories and video
Alerts
-
- Editor’s Bulletin
- With Margo Goodhand
-
- Send us your video
- Upload breaking news clips
-
- Insiders Reader Panel
- Join Today!
Advertisement
AIDS in INDIA
The fight against AIDS in India
The University of Manitoba has been tackling the spread of HIV among high-risk sex workers in southern India since the World Bank asked researchers to step in in the late 1990s.
At the time, disease surveillance pegged India as the next Sub-Saharan Africa and projected the HIV epidemic could affect between 20 and 25 million people as early as 2010.
In Karnataka alone, disease surveillance estimated 1.5 per cent of the population was HIV positive - more than 500,000 people.
U of M joined forces with the Karnataka State government to form Karnataka Health Promotion Trust — the largest HIV prevention organization in India that now has regular contact with more than 80,000 sex workers in 31 state districts.
Reporter Jen Skerritt visited Bangalore and several Karnataka villages in late 2007 and witnessed firsthand the complex social and cultural barriers that have hindered efforts to contain the spread of HIV.
While U of M researchers have garnered some success, deeply ingrained traditions, thousands of sex workers, and an increasing number of HIV-related deaths have left researchers fighting an uphill battle.
Where HIV flourishes
India on the edge
Holabasappa Murnal lost her son to AIDS in 2004. The Murnal family shares their tiny painted home with a pair of oxen, there is no running water, no bathroom, and Holabasappa said the family has had to live on less money since Shamkrappa died.
Chaitra, 7, will grow up with her grandfather since Shamkrappa died from AIDS.
Shamkrappa Murnal, 29, died of AIDS. In India, families only display photos of the deceased in their homes.
Rudravva, (left) is a 20-year-old window since her husband died. Her family said she’ll likely never remarry.
Holabasappa displays traditional chapatti flat- bread she makes from scratch.
The Murnal family
The red brick exterior of a home in Janamatti, the village where the Murnal family lives. It is about 30 kilometres northwest of Bagalkot.
A village woman cooks dinner over a smoky pot.
Village children crowd around a KHPT project vehicle leaving Janamatti.
Manjula is a 25-year-old sex worker from rural Karnataka who was abandoned by her husband after she had a miscarriage. An older woman helped Manjula get male clients so she could support herself and her family.
Sex workers meet with KHPT project workers at the drop-in centre regularly to discuss concerns and new ideas on how to keep women safe and healthy.
The woman in green came into the drop-in centre crying after her son had beaten her. He had just found out she was a sex worker.
Asma Alkalam, 26, was forced into the sex trade by her husband who locked her in a room and made her have sex with men for money. Alkalam said she couldn't tell anyone about the abuse because she didn't want to tarnish the reputation of her upper-caste Muslim family.
Eight years ago, most lower-class gay, transgendered and transsexuals were victims of police violence, unnecessary arrests and widespread discrimination. Between three and four men were dying of AIDS a month, and many men did not have the knowledge to understand "what" they are and how to fight for their rights.
The equality movement gathered steam in 2001 after a local transsexual sex worker was raped by a group of men. Police arrested the victim, instead of the perpetrators, and took her back to the police station where officers burnt her with cigarettes, beat her, and shoved rifle butts into her body cavities.
Sangama mounted a crisis response team and began a public campaign for equality. Now if two people are arrested, more than 100 community members will immediately gather outside the police station in protest. Arrests and harassment still occur, but the number of violent incidents has dropped from five a day to around 10 each month.
Every day, Thomas, who does not want to reveal his last name, wanders through Cubbon Park and doles out condoms and lube. He points to a pile of used rubbers at his feet and says most men are now open to the idea of safe sex and are using protection.
Cubbon Park is where local men cruise for casual or paid sex. Between its winding pathways and sky-grazing bamboo trees are eleven of the city's sexual hotspots for gays, transgendered and transsexuals.
Although violence against sex workers is less of a problem in rural areas like Bijapur, Duragavva Madar still has a scar from where a man knifed her in the stomach. "Our life is in danger in this business," she said.
Brothel women gather in a sunlit courtyard, where they often meet to talk and eat. The brothel is home to about 30 women, and is nestled behind a movie theatre and popular bar in Bijapur.
A busy street near the brothel
Chandramma, a sex worker who now works with KHPT to help mobilize community women, was one of four sex workers illegally detained by police last year.
Soromya (centre) says she's afraid of asking her clients to use condoms after two men beat and raped her when she asked them to use protection.
(L-R) Uma and Chikkathayamma say the violence has been getting worse the more women demand safe sex from clients.
Sex workers routinely visit the drop-in centre to get checked for sexually-transmitted infections.
The Suraksha drop-in centre.
The Suraksha drop-in centre.
Chikkathayamma leaves the drop-in centre to visit peers in a nearby brothel.
The view from a busy alleyway in Channapattana where shopkeepers, handicraft makers and farmers sell their goods.
A Channapattana brothel.
The interior of a filthy brothel room where sex workers take clients.
A bag of condoms is nestled in a wall crack. Proof, project workers say, women are making clients wear protection.
The inside of another room in the brothel.
An ox walks down a Channapattana street. Many families use oxen to pull carts full of food and goods to sell in the local market.
It's 10 a.m. and dozens of HIV positive children wait outside the HIV clinic to see a doctor.
A girl cuddles her tiny brother in her arms before they go inside the clinic.
Rakha Pujari is HIV positive. Both her mother and father died of AIDS.
Six-year-old Muttappa has been living with his grandmother since is mom died of AIDS. He is also HIV positive, and his grandmother, Nila Wa, said she will eventually send him away to an orphanage.
Devadasis sing together during a meeting at a local drop-in centre for sex workers.
Shobha Mang, a devadasi, outside her one-room home in a littered alleyway.
Shobha's daughter lives with her brother since she entertains men inside the home.
Many devadasi cruise area bus stops for clients.
Two men loiter against a graffiti wall near the bus stand.
During the harvest season, migrant workers from villages across Karnataka and Mahashrata pitch temporary tents to live in while they work the fields. Many migrant men visit sex workers during temporary work stints, but are a difficult population for disease researchers to track.
Mudhol, like all villages and towns in rural Karnataka, has no system of waste collection. Residents burn their garbage and "garbage pigs" roam around town eating scraps of litter.
Some rural residents who don't have access to diesel-powered trucks still haul their sugarcane the old-fashioned way – with a pair of oxen and a bullock cart.
Migrant workers set up house next to a large sugarcane field.
Bagalkot
Bagalkot is a district comprised of hundreds of small villages and 1.5 million people along the Karnataka-Mahashrata border. A few years ago, disease surveys revealed that 3.6 per cent of the Bagalkot-area population was HIV positive.
In 2003, AIDS was reported as the cause of 17 per cent of deaths in Bagalkot - the single leading cause of death among people aged 15 to 49.
In response, University of Manitoba researchers have beefed up their presence in villages in the Bagalkot area.
Bangalore
Swathi Mane drop-in centre is one of Karnataka Health Promotion Trust's largest outreach programs in the state, and possibly India. Run by a non-governmental organization, the program keeps regular contact with more than 16,000 female sex workers.
They focus on HIV prevention, sexually transmitted disease education and empowering women to reduce violence. The program has recently launched a crisis response team, so sex workers can phone a peer on a cell phone if she's being beaten or is having trouble with a client. more-->
Bangalore
Aside from their work with female sex workers, University of Manitoba researchers have made strides in reducing HIV rates by targeting men who have sex with men. Several years ago, disease rates revealed as many as 20 per cent of men who have sex with men were HIV positive.
Karnataka Health Promotion Trust now funds Sangama, an NGO that works with some of the 15,000 urban men who have sex with men. They target areas where men “cruise” for sex with other men, including Cubbon Park, a 70 acre public park in the heart of Bangalore. <--back
Bijapur
Bijapur is a northern district where about 1.4 per cent of sex workers are HIV positive. KHPT works directly with about 1,600 female sex workers and has had some success in reducing the high rates of sexually transmitted disease and promoting condom use.
Channapattana
Channapattana is an urban slum on the outskirts of Bangalore where about 11 per cent of female sex workers are HIV positive. The area has some of the highest number of urban sex workers in all of Bangalore, and many women work in local brothels and in lodges off of busy highways.
KHPT has partnered with Suraksha, an NGO, to fund HIV prevention projects here. The program has also focused a lot of effort on reducing violence – one of the major hurdles hampering infection control efforts here.
Jamkhandi
Jamkhandi is a small town about 30 kilometres north of Mudhol. About 400 children in the area are HIV positive.
KHPT funds a treatment clinic that rotates through Jamkhandi certain times during the month, so children can receive proper nutrition kits, information and drugs, if necessary.
An estimated 1,600 HIV orphans live in 250 villages in northern Karnataka.
Mudhol
Mudhol is a small town near the border of Karnataka and Mahashrata where HIV infection rates are among the highest in the country. The town is nestled between swaying palm trees and green sugarcane fields by the Ghatapraba River and is home to thousands sex workers who are mostly devadasi.
For hundreds of years, devadasis were considered religious icons in many villages in this area. Families would dedicate one of their girls to "serve" the temple priests sexually, and symbolically, marry them to the deity. more-->
Mudhol
Today, the profession is no more than a socially acceptable way to exploit women in villages across northern Karnataka. Devadasis no longer work out of temples and are "dedicated" by their families to become prostitutes as soon as they hit puberty. Some even do sex work out of their parents' homes and are the major income earners for their family.
Mudhol is one town where University of Manitoba researchers have focused much of their infection control efforts. <--back
