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| July 24, 2000 | ||
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| AIDS
TREATMENT Damned to Death An entire village in Uttar Pradesh ostracises an HIV-positive labourer, Govind Singh. Locked up for three months along with animals in a dark and dirty enclosure, he dies an inhuman death. An INDIA TODAY exclusive shows how ignorance compounded the agony of an AIDS victim. By Subhash Mishra
Even the mean streets of Mumbai hadn't prepared Govind for what he was about to face. News of his affliction spread like wildfire, and the villagers, including his wife, brother and other relatives, dragged him into a gote -- an enclosure where domestic animals like cows and goats are kept. Incarcerated in the cold, foul-smelling gote for over three months, Govind's condition worsened. Unable to stay on his feet, he now lay supine on the floor, often stepped upon by the animals. "He became the centre of attraction for the villagers who used to peep into the enclosure and tease him," says his brother Joga. Govind had to defecate inside the gote and was not allowed to bathe. Social ostracism and the unhygienic conditions in the gote took their toll. On the morning of July 5, Govind was found dead. He was given a hurried cremation outside the village, much to the relief of the inhabitants of Chucher. Four years ago Govind, along with some other youths of Chucher, had migrated to Mumbai to seek work as labourers. "For the past one year, he was not keeping well," recalls Devaki, his 25-year-old wife. In February, when he went for a check up in Laksh Deep Hospital in Mumbai, he was declared HIV positive. S.D. Teckchandani, the doctor who had carried out an Elisa test, noted in his report that the "positive test is not diagnostic of AIDS and should be confirmed by the Western Blot test". As Govind could not afford this costly (Rs 700) test he returned home. Meanwhile, those who had gone to Mumbai with Govind dispatched letters to their kin about his test. Says Joga: "They wrote that nobody should touch, talk or even see Govind." The missives from Mumbai created panic among the villagers who went after Govind. Govind's isn't an isolated tragedy. Located 60 km from the district headquarters, Chucher lacks every modern amenity. Strangely, AIDS is one of the deadly sins, a big scare-word in the area. Testing HIV positive is enough to be branded an AIDS patient. What follows is a kind of standard operating procedure -- the "AIDS patient" is locked up inside the gote and left to rot. Two youths were "murdered" in a similar fashion in the past year alone. Bhopal Singh, 35, was sent into a gote by his father last year. "We used to throw him food from outside," recalls Bhopal's father Yashpal. Bhopal died within a month of his confinement. He too had tested HIV positive after migrating to Mumbai. The reason for such sweeping paranoia perhaps lies in the primitive existence in Chucher. According to the villagers, the HIV positive men would spread the disease in the village and the scourge would engulf all of them. For them, AIDS is the most infectious of all diseases and the stricken person has to be kept in absolute seclusion. Worse, the villagers feel that the sooner they get rid of such people the better it will be for them. Chucher's inaccessibility have deprived the villagers of the light of progress in the outside world. In a manner of speaking, Chucher hasn't stepped out of medieval times. Its backwardness can be gauged from the fact that it has not seen electricity. It is so primitive that the flour mill is run by a panchakki -- an invention of the Middle Ages that uses water current. "Nobody used to talk to us. Everybody, including my in-laws, avoided meeting us," says Devaki. "Govind's children also faced a sort of apartheid in their schools," confirms H.B. Bhatt, chief spokesman of the Uttarakhand Jan Adhikar Manch. Nor did anyone invite Govind's family during festivals and other functions, points out Bhatt. In such a milieu, it is no wonder that Govind's family turned against him. It was to avoid social boycott that even his wife Devaki colluded to sentence him to an existence in a gote beneath her kuchcha hut. "Our only contact was when we went to throw him rotis from a distance," she says. Compounding the family's misfortune was official inaction. Govind's inhuman treatment came to the notice of two social activists, Ramesh K. Mumukshu and Ganga Singh Pangati. They met District Magistrate V.K. Gupta -- who was incidentally transferred last week -- and apprised him of the situation. Gupta asked Bageshwar's Chief Medical Officer (CMO) R.S. Bhandari to pursue the matter. But the CMO's move is quite out of kilter. Instead of trying to reassure the villagers that Govind had only tested HIV positive, that he was not a confirmed AIDS patient and instead of removing misconceptions about the disease, he chose to suppress the case. He wrote on the application of the social activists: "The case should be kept secret." Despite repeated reminders, the district administration, Health Department and the NGOs maintained a studied silence over Govind's confinement to the gote and the social boycott of the family. "In Uttarakhand, there are nearly 14,000 NGOs and every second one is working in the field of health and AIDS. But nobody took any action despite knowing that a man was literally chained along with animals for being a suspected AIDS patient," laments Bhatt. But according to Aslam Zaidi, medical officer at the Bageshwar primary health centre, there's no point in blaming the administration. "What could we do? Govind's own family members were keeping him in the gote." Govind's death hasn't seen the end of misery for his family. Devaki is now facing social boycott for "living together" with her husband immediately after his return from Mumbai. "She should go for a test. Otherwise, people will treat her like an AIDS patient," says Joga. But right now it's a more pressing matter that is haunting Devaki. Forget money for an AIDS test, living in utter penury she does not have a penny for the terahvin of her husband. And if she does not prove to be HIV-free, it is certain that the panic-mongers of Chucher will one day push her too into a gote to get rid of an "AIDS patient". Chucher isn't a unique incident. AIDS is an area of darkness even in metropolitan cities. An HIV-positive person is a social pariah and many doctors still treat an AIDS patient like an untouchable. A person with a full-blown case has no option but to go home and die. Even though a lot of money has been pumped in, awareness campaigns have completely failed. All that the Uttar Pradesh AIDS Control Society, the sole agency for awareness in the state, does is put up banners and hoardings and the occasional wall painting. Clearly, in a country that has the world's second largest HIV-positive population and where 11,000 people die of AIDS every year, such a penchant for panic will only create many more Govinds and Devakis. It continues to be the price of ignorance. |
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It
sounds like a tale from the Middle Ages. But for 29-year-old Govind Singh,
a labourer who had returned home from Mumbai to Chucher village in
Bageshwar district of Uttar Pradesh, it was a walk through the portals of
a private hell. When he set off from the city, apart from a few trinkets
for his two children and his wife, he had brought along something that was
troubling his mind no end. Coursing in his blood was the virus of death
and, worse, disgrace: acquired immune deficiency syndrome or AIDS.