Church AIDS care centre opens in India
The CWM-member Church of North India's care centre in Madhya Pradesh treats and cares for people with HIV/AIDS reports Anto Akkara.
A traditional, caste-based form of prostitution thrives in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.
Parents themselves force girls barely in their teens into prostitution, relying on the drivers of trucks travelling through the villages dotted along the highway.
"I am an unlucky woman," laments 28-year old Santosh Babulal whose husband Raju brought HIV to her family by frequenting prostitutes.
Family: Santosh Babulal and her son Kailash are among the first people to use the AIDS care centre.
© Anto Akkara
Not only are Santosh and Raju HIVpositive. Her five-year old younger son, Kailash, is HIV-positive and seriously ill.
"Our fate is clear. But what about my daughter?" asks the distraught mother, increasingly anxious about the future of her daughter nine-year old Roshni. Though the girl is not infected she dropped out of school when the family moved out from their village near Neemuch.
Officials of the CWM-member Church of North India worry too as they try to find a sponsor for Roshni to attend a boarding school.
Struggling
AIDS workers from the Church of North India (CNI) came into contact with the family when they were struggling to make both ends meet, with Raju Babulal unable to work as a manual labourer due to his deteriorating health.
The church workers promptly sent the family to a distant hospital at Indore for treatment.
Since then the CNI opened a dedicated AIDS care and counselling centre at the Christian Mission hospital in nearby Ratlam.
Santosh and her family moved in even before the 4 October inauguration. Half a dozen HIV-positive people including three members of a Hindu family moved into the AIDS counselling and care centre launched under the Project Nirmal of the CNI's AIDS combat programme.
Karuna Roy, coordinator of the AIDS programme run by the Church of North India is delighted. "This is a big milestone for our AIDS work in this region. We now have a support centre to treat and care for the HIV-positive people instead of taking them to government hospitals without proper facilities," she says.
"Our aim is first to have proper facilities to treat opportunistic infections for HIV positive people. We will also use the centre as a platform to spread awareness about AIDS," says hospital director Dr Patience William.
Rejoice: Health workers celebrate the AIDS care centre opening.
© Anto Akkara.
He said the opening of the AIDS care centre will boost the ongoing Nirmal project of the CNI to combat AIDS among the hundreds of young girls and women who live by prostitution along the highway between Ratlam and Neemuch.
"The patients themselves will be our publicity," says William, pointing out that when HIV patients return to their villages healthier, others will flock to the centre. The centre will also provide regular counseling on HIV/AIDS to those visiting the hospital with over 100 beds to remove their fear about AIDS.
Mahendra Pancholi, a CNI project officer in Neemuch, says that the patients already admitted to the centre were referred to them by government health officials as there are no government centres to care for HIV/AIDS cases in the region.
Those who have been admitted in the AIDS care centre, Pancholi says, were the beneficiaries of the Nirmal project that also provides dry rations regularly to families of HIV-positive people.
"AIDS is epidemic in this region," says Roy. With the hospice now at their disposal, she says, the Nirmal project can be more effective.