BOMBAY: About I’m people in India die each year of disease associated with diarrhea, 600,000 of lung infections and 500,000 measles. By comparison, the 103 people known to have AIDS according to government figures, do not seem much of a problem Yet there are well founded fears that the disease could become India’s biggest killer.
An official in Delhi of the World Health Organization guesses that 500,000 Indians are infected with HIV, the vis that, sooner or later is likely to bring down a victim with AIDS. Make a pessimistic projection, and it would seem that by the year 2000 the number infected could be as high as Sm. James McDermott, an American congressman trained as a doctor, did his own research on a trip India last year, He believes the number of infected Indians is already I’m.
The virus i spreading through prostitution, the use of unsterilized needles by drug takers and from the use of blood from infected donors. Drug addicts are unlikely to change their habits. Wise patients may want i avoid transfusions, but that may prove difficult in emergencies. Meanwhile the services of prostitutes or “sex workers” as sociologists prefer to call them are bound to be in great demand in a country where no decent woman is supposed to have sex before or outside marriage.
However, social inhibitions are not the only reason for the great demand for prostitutes. A special feature of India is that it has outs of migrant workers living far from home; and the huge subcontinent has thousands of long distance lorry drivers also deprived of the comfort of their wives.
In Bombay alone, McDermott be leaves, more than 100,000 prostitutes attend to the needs of an average of six customers a day. Prostitutes in Tamil Nadi had the misfortune to be identified first, in 1986, as the carriers of HIV. Since then almost every state in India has contributed is statistic. The country’s Council for Medical Research reckons that one prostitute in thee in Bombay, Madras and Pune has the virus.
Most commercial sex goes unprotected. The use of the condom, which appears to have helped to reduce the rate of infection in Thailand, has yet to make an impact in India. The Prime Minister, Narasimha Rao, says condoms are a good thing. Social workers do their best to get prostitutes to insist that customers use condoms, though the girls fear that they will harm their trade, Perhaps the fear of the authorities will prove some parts of India, police have been arresting people on then suspicion that they are HIV infected.
(The Economist)
Article extracted from this publication >> March 27, 1992
