Features & Articles

AIDS orphans in Manipur
Article written by Rina Mukherji

MANIPUR:
One and a half year old Nemphiling is as pretty as a picture. Her rosy cheeks, cherubic face, bright black eyes, and infectious giggly gurgle are as welcoming as the verdant beauty of her home in Manipur. But her joy will not last long. She lives condemned to death; she is HIV positive, infected at birth by her mother who contracted the virus from her intravenous drug user father.

The impish smile on nine-year old Mangokhao is as transitory. One of six siblings born to a peasant family, the little boy and his younger sibling were born HIV positive, at birth, owing to their IDU father passing on the virus to their mother. Ten-year-old Lenjagin has a similar story. Only, his parents are already ill, causing his grandmother to take on the burden of bringing him and his siblings up.

These children are just a few destined to join the hundreds of AIDS orphans in Manipur, who are swelling in numbers by the day. With parents dead, grandparents generally unable or extremely reluctant to look after them, more and more boys are being thrown out into the streets to join the ranks of street-children, while girls become free domestics in the homes of relatives for a roof over their heads.

For Anna, a 12-year old orphan who spent the last few years tending to her sick parents at the cost of school and education, life at her relatives home is an absolute nightmare. She is engaged in household chores all though the day, with only abuse and harsh words coming her way. Food is the bare minimum, hardly adequate for an infected (HIV positive) person like her. But then, she is grateful for a roof over her head. There are no homes to exclusively house the HIV positive, while existing government homes for orphans are not willing to accommodate them.

Torn asunder by insurgency, deaths, encounters and the like, Manipur is fighting to restore normalcy and peace. Consequently, the government has no time to spare for problems like these even as the AIDS juggernaut sweeps over its verdant land.

If medical experts and international bodies perceive India as a land where the African AIDS tragedy is all set to take off, Manipur is a state where the tragedy has already started showing its first telltale signs of impending disaster. Of the 4.5 million people recorded as HIV +ve in India, a sizeable percentage happen to be in Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Manipur, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Goa, going by the findings of the national sentinel surveillance round.

But the method of transmission in Manipur, unlike as in the other states, is primarily through intravenous drug usage. (In the case of all the other states, unprotected heterosexual contact is the major mode of transmission). This, again, is the product of several factors- including high frustration and unemployment among the youth, Manipurs proximity to the international border and thence the Golden Triangle of Thailand, Laos and Burma through which drug cartels operate, and few successful anti-drug programmes managing to create the necessary awareness among impressionable youngsters.

Be that as it may, the current situation is such that the HIV sero-prevalence rate among female spouses of IDUs stands as high as 44 per cent. As per the findings of the Manipur AIDS Control Society, the sero-positivity rate in Manipur per one million people stands at 15.74 per cent, which is 6 times higher than in Maharashtra, and 20 times higher than in Tamil Nadu. More alarming is the fact that the largest percentages of sero-positive cases happen to be in the 21-30 years (56.97 per cent) and 31-40 years (25.29 per cent) age groups.

Going by the district-wise percentage of HIV positive cases, the capital city of Imphal showed as high a percentage as 68.78 per cent.Around 10 per cent of the population in the 0-5 years age group is estimated by experts to be HIV positive in this state. This means, the state shall soon lose a major proportion of its able-bodied working population to the dread disease. HIV positive children, normally do not survive beyond 12 years of age here. Most of these children die by the time they reach 10 years, given their inability to partake nutritious food. Thus, with more than half its young childbearing generation affected, AIDS shall take its toll of two full generations-comprising parents and their newborn infected children.

And yet, not even half the kind of effort being made in Tamil Nadu or Maharashtra is being put in Manipur, especially in the Kuki tribal populated hill districts where low literacy, lack of awareness and the total absence of AIDS-related health services makes matters worse.

The saddest part is that the Church or non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are totally uninterested in the plight of these unfortunates. There is a studied silence on their part. There are several American sponsored Church projects operational in these parts, yet none of these involve the care for and treatment of AIDS patients, says Anthony Haokip who has started the Good Shepherd Mission along with some like-minded friends to work in the Saikul-Molkon area outside Imphal.

Haokip and his friends use their personal savings and spare time to educate peasants in 41 villages of the Saikul-Molkon area on the dangers inherent in intravenous drug usage, the importance of using condoms and the prevention of AIDS. They run a school and clinic in these parts. Anti-AIDS Medicines and health services are also provided through their Good Shepherd Mission.

Many parts in Manipur badly affected by the disease lie in the agricultural outskirts of Imphal and thereabouts. The death of peasants by the droves, hence, spells the onset of a disaster that will curtail food production in this already troubled state. Zimbabwe and other sub-Saharan African nations are today reeling under drought with no one left to tend the farms. It is high time government agencies and NGOs woke up before a similar catastrophe overtakes Manipur in the near future.



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