HIV/AIDS legislation

Abstract

"The litany of woes related to HIV/AIDS continues unabated in India. An orphanage in Gujarat's Kutch district removed two boys after they tested HIV-positive. The head of the orphanage claimed that the young boys posed a risk to the other children in the orphanage. The boys have lost their mother to AIDS, their father suffers from mental illness and no one else in their family is willing to look after them. A six-year-old boy in West Bengal was struck off the rolls of his school when it was found that his father was HIV-positive. A woman in a village in Bihar's Dharbanga district was shunned and left alone to handle the cremation of her deceased husband who was HIV-positive. Her neighbours believed that they could contract the virus by entering her house. A woman was denied a ticket to fight the assembly elections for the Congress party when local leaders opposed her candidature due to her HIV-positive status"