Whisper of death

Wed, 22 Aug 2001 15:59:00 +0000

P. Kousalya sits behind her desk in a second-floor office off a dusty, diesel-polluted street in India's southern port city of Madras. Her hair is pulled back; a green "khati" cloth smock hangs from her shoulders, revealing her fragile, petite frame. When she stands, she looks more like a teenager. Kousalya, for all practical purposes, should be dead. But she survives on donated drugs from doctors who get them as samples at conferences and the community of women she clings to in the Positive Women's Network for the state of Tamil Nadu. She also serves as the group's president.

Her story of forced marriage, forced sex and subsequent infection with HIV from her husband, who knew of his status before the marriage, is typical of many new cases in India. Kousalya's plight, along with that of millions of others, was the subject of the first-ever United Nations General Assembly Special Session on a disease last month. During the meeting, U.N. officials placed India alongside Eastern Europe, the Caribbean and Asia at the top of the list of areas where the disease is likely to explode as it has in sub-Saharan Africa if governments do not act quickly and boldly. "We are projecting that deaths are going into the millions very quickly" in India and China, said Mark Malloch Brown, administrator of the United Nations Development Program. Yet, disturbingly, not one head of state from any Eastern European country or Asia came to the session in New York.

Salon.com > Michael McColly

Whisper of death