CRS-sponsored HIV/AIDS programs help clear stigma in southern India

Published: 2007-03-13

WARANGAL, India (CNS) -- When K. Balalakshmi returned home after several days of attending to her HIV-positive widowed daughter in the hospital, the elderly woman was surprised to find that Manchupahad villagers had stopped using the village well. Balalakshmi learned that the villagers stopped because she had washed her daughter's clothes near the well. Abettu Krishna, a church outreach worker, said he had tried "to explain to them that AIDS could not be infected in such a way" but that "they would not believe me at all. Krishna works with the Warangal Diocese's home-based care program, which is supported by Catholic Relief Services, the U.S. bishops' international relief and aid agency. Andhra Pradesh, the south Indian state where the diocese is located, has one of the highest HIV prevalence rates in India. About 2 percent of the state's population is HIV-positive. Krishna, who is HIV-positive, told Catholic News Service during an interview at the Jangaon office of the diocese's social agency, the Multipurpose Social Service Society, that he eventually brought in Dr. Jarupula Sunil Kumar, Warangal district coordinator of the government's Andhra Pradesh AIDS Control Society, to the village to fix the well problem. Finally, after the media covered the doctor drinking from the well as Krishna pumped, the villagers used the well again. "There is lot of fears about AIDS among the people," said Krishna, 33, whose wife was taken away from him by her parents four years ago when they discovered he was HIV-positive. "But gradually, awareness is growing." He shuttles between remote villages around Jangaon, reaching out to dozens of people affected by HIV/AIDS.

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