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| Activists demand action on draft HIV Bill, during Global AIDS Action Week |
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To mark Global AIDS Action Week, activists in India want the government to pass a Bill that gives AIDS patients the right to treatment and outlaws discrimination against them |
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In India, HIV/AIDS activists are marking Global AIDS Action Week, beginning May 18, with the demand that the government act on the draft of the HIV/AIDS Bill immediately. “Global AIDS Action Week is an advocacy platform for the cause of HIV/AIDS patients the world over. In India this year, our focus is to urge the government to act upon the (draft of) the HIV/AIDS Bill because it will empower HIV patients to lead a life free of discrimination,” said Pragya Vats of ActionAid India, an international developmental agency. The draft of the HIV/AIDS Bill is with the law ministry and is in the consultation phase. The Bill makes a patient’s right to treatment and to live a fulfilled life mandatory. It also seeks to outlaw large-scale discrimination against HIV patients (for details see ‘Wanted, a special law on HIV’). Such a law is urgently required given the open discrimination that people with HIV/AIDS face. On May 18, the first day of Action Week, the Indian media reported a case where the husband and family of a woman who died of AIDS refused to conduct her funeral; the body lay in the hospital morgue for 48 hours until an NGO stepped in and offered to carry out the funeral rites if family members continued to shun the dead woman. Vats said that over 200 people, most of them patients, NGOs and civil society members, will take part in the ‘AIDS Walk for Rights’ on May 21, in Delhi, when they march from Jantar Mantar in the heart of the capital to the health ministry office. They will also write to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in this regard. In Gujarat, postcards will be sent to Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss urging him to push for the Bill. Seminars, workshops, rallies and candlelight vigils in Delhi and nine other states -- Nagaland, Manipur, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Orissa, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu -- will be held during the course of the week. Worldwide, Action Week will be celebrated in 30 countries demanding a stronger response and accountability for HIV/AIDS patients. Source: IANS, May 17, 2008 |