Tuesday, November 14, 2017

The Story is Father to the Author

The story of 'How HIV found its way to a remote corner of the Himalayas', is related in an article in the English Guardian. It was male economic migrants who went to India and "returned home with a very different legacy to the one [they] anticipated", infecting their partners, who then had children born with the virus. (But things are now improving because of the actions of the female victims.)

Here's a comment on an 'interview' with one of the males who went to India to work: "Like many other men interviewed in Achham, Sarpa has a well-rehearsed story that explains how he believes he contracted HIV, but it does not involve any sex workers, whom researchers believe are the primary source of migrants’ HIV infections."

Journalist Kate Hodal doesn't bother telling us how Sarpa says he was infected, preferring instead to believe the testimony of 'researchers'. How these researchers know that Sarpa is a liar, along with all the other people they have interviewed (and disbelieved), is anyone's guess. Perhaps they have some independent explanation or account of the HIV risks that people face in India?

While Sarpa speaks "coolly", his wife Sita "has had to accept the likelihood [Sarpa] visited Indian brothels", indicating all this with a shake of her head.

Hodal is clearly something of a psychic, who can know that while Sarpa lies, Sita tells the truth, but without uttering it. Hodal also knows that the opinion of researchers about HIV risks is of more value than the self-reported accounts of people who are infected, or who may become infected.

Meanwhile in Canada, journalist Ashifa Kassam writes about a pop-up restaurant run by HIV positive people. Far from pointing the finger at people with HIV, the article is about ‘challenging stigma’. The words of those interviewed are quoted, and their honesty is not in question.

Population figures, numbers of people living with HIV, prevalence, even the breakdown by gender of those infected, are not vastly different in Canada and Nepal. Although Nepal’s epidemic is usually described as ‘concentrated’, in contrast to Canada’s ‘low-level’ epidemic, the two are remarkably similar in some ways.

In contrast, in Canada, the vast majority of people are infected with HIV through unprotected, receptive anal sex and injecting drug use. But neither of those routes are thought to be so common in Nepal.

However, there is a huge difference in the way HIV in Nepal and Canada are viewed by the media. In Canada, those with HIV are wholeheartedly encouraged to continue their fight against stigma. But in Nepal, the journalist writes something she may have believed before she left her desk: HIV is ‘spread’ by promiscuous men, to unwitting women and children.

HIV positive Canadians can speak for themselves, and are not required to explain or justify their status. But Nepalese men need journalists and researchers to call them out on their lies about how they were infected; and Nepalese women need the same intermediaries to identify them as victims, unable to name the aggressors, or to speculate about how their partners became infected.


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