For last word on AIDS, make sense of these letters first

For starters, try the alphabet soup. Here’s a taste of some acronyms. DU, contrary to local belief, is not a seat of education, but short for Drug Users. IDU is Injecting Drug User and IVDU is intra-venous drug user. Injecting drugs as you know is a high-risk behaviour, so IDUs may benefit from TIPs ie Targeted Intervention Programmes. And of course there are TIPs for CSWs (Commercial Sex Workers) too.

But then not everyone likes the `C’ in the CSW. `Do we say Commercial Teachers, or Commercial Factory workers? So why not just Sex Workers?’ Fine, so CSW is SW. And often, to be specific, you have FSW. `F’ as you have guessed, is for “female.” Naturally, to keep the balance of nature, you also need to accommodate MSWs.

Male sex workers are at particular risk, first because they are not half as organised as brothel-based FSWs, second, because the nature of their sex work when the client is a man, is often more traumatic and violent, which further helps in the transmission of HIV.

Which brings us to MSM. Pardon? No, it isn’t derived from S&M, it just stands for Men having Sex with Men. In fact, MSM itself is pretty hush-hush in India, which doesn’t really help in raising AIDS awareness.

Multiple-partner MSM, like any multiple-partner sex, is high risk behaviour, and this is where your condom comes in. But wait. Why on earth do you need a word like MSM when you already have words like gay and homosexual? Because MSM specifies behaviour, not the identity. It doesn’t matter whether you are gay, bisexual or even heterosexual, if you have taken part in MSM you better know the risks. Again, to keep the gender balance, we have WSW, but lesbian sex by itself has far fewer risks of HIV infection.

But women do pass the infection on, not just through sex, but also through MTCT or Mother To Child Transmission. An enormous number of pregnant HIV positive women give birth to infected babies. Babies who live long enough to be orphaned and face a hostile world that still ostracises those with this terminal illness. Of course, you cannot really be aware of AIDS without being informed about STDs (no, it’s not a long-distance call to your mother, but Sexually Transmitted Diseases) and RTIs (Reproductive Tract Infections). Also, you can’t quite get the full picture if you are not aware of VAW (Violence Against Women) in our society. Turning a blind eye to such social ills severely restricts your understanding of the pandemic. It’s all part of the IEC. That’s Information, Education and Communication.

And when was the last time you gave a thought to PWAs, Persons With AIDS. The term has now been broadened to PLWHA or People Living With HIV/AIDS. Do you seriously know anything about their QOL? That’s quality of life, by the way. The infected are entitled to a certain QOL wouldn’t you say, simply as citizens with human rights? Maybe you should get in touch with an NGO or CBO (community based organisation) and get more IEC on the KABP Knowledge, Attitude, Behaviour/Belief and Practices) of people involved in high-risk behaviour.

Whether you are LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) or not, it could save your life.

Finally, once you have gone through the AZT, ZDV, NRTI, NNRTI and various PIs that help treat the HIV-infected, remember the most important acronym in the treatment of HIV/AIDS: WTO. For the World Trade Organisation controls the accessibility of drugs to AIDS patients.

It decides which countries can afford to treat their AIDS patients and which cannot. It decides, in effect, whether an NRI with AIDS can get to live longer than an RI (resident Indian) with AIDS. Give it a thought.