How, when and why AIDS? It is something that we have been drooling about for sometime. Manipur is a state where AIDS education and awareness is much higher than anywhere in India, even the metro cities of India do not possess this rate of education.

Here I am going to deal with the problem that we all seem to hide rather not talk about it. This problem is with people who were drug users at some point of time and who are now clean and back in the society. Now we all know that the amount of risk that these people carry of having the disease is much higher than anyone else. The problem here is the family. It has been seen that the families generally tend to get the person married to someone so that, you know, he/she lives a decent life. But no one thinks about the risk. All that matters for them is for the person to get married and lead a totally different life, which in the society we call it as a CLEAN life.

The risk here is enormous because it involves the wife/husband of the person, who will be at risk for the disease. Most ex-drug users do not go for a blood test to find out whether they are indeed infected or not. And in this context the family also does not tend to find out, all that matters for the family is that he/she is now clean from DRUGS.

Another one is someone getting this disease unknowingly through blood transfusion. In a country where blood bank regulations are still to come up, anyone is at risk. I may be wrong but personally I have not seen any blood bank doing the necessary test before either storing or giving blood. Now who is to be blamed? Now the first thing that strikes everyone when they hear that a person has HIV/AIDS is the character of the person. In Manipur we generally relate to drug users, but in other parts of the world where the drug problem is not as BIG as Manipur, a person with HIV/AIDS is viewed as a loose character.

Whatever the case is, NO ONE really cares about the person. No one cares about what the person goes through, the pain, the agony etc etc. all we give is sympathy.
The first thing that we do is the blaming business, we tend to find out what went wrong, who is responsible and stuff like that. But it is not really what is needed. For a person who is infected with this disease, the only thing that matters to them is for someone to tell them that even if it's the END, there is still LIFE left for them, they don't need SYMPATHY, all they need is an encouragement to live life the way they have lived. They are the most important people to be educated in terms of this disease. We have to first stop them from spreading it to another person. We have to make them realize the reality of this life and make them accept the PRESENT.

We all know that this disease is not curable and we also know that it is not transferred so easily. All of us are at risk, drool into your past, get the blood test done regularly, check for yourself, and if you are one of them, don't be disheartened, HELP others by stopping the disease in you, do not let it go from you, that is what all infected people has to realize, specially women married to infected men, they need to stop it within them, do not let it go to your child.

Here are few things that we need to know:

1. If you know someone who is infected, please do not cut off your relationship with him/her. They need you for inspiration.
2. If someone infected is ready for marriage than we must make him/her realize the consequences. It is better to save lives than to risk someone with this dreaded disease.
3. If you have got the disease from your spouse, then you have all the rights to go to the court and demand justice. Do not be in the dark, find out everything about your partner before marriage, be it a love marriage or arranged.
4. If you indeed are infected, stop it within yourself. DO NOT SPREAD.

That is all what we can do, we can stay with any body who is infected, treat them the same way that we have been treating but in the same time make sure that the disease is not spread from that person.

Though we don't have direct control on someone's life, still we can try and make the person UNDERSTAND the consequences of this disease, which is so wide spread that after some years we will run out of resources to fight the MENACE.

If you have any questions, I would be delighted to help you out. You can mail me at [email protected] with the subject line as "HIV/AIDS INFO".

The more we don't talk about it the more IGNORANT we are going to be.

I am currently looking out for people who can be part of my NGO group. Mail me for more details.