A faint smirk passes Pravasini Pradhan’s face as she remembers how a decade ago she had turned into an exhibit for people — people who used to come all the way to her house, just to see what a HIV positive person looked like!
“I may find it utterly ridiculous today, but it was quite painful and scary then,” says the 32-year-old. “Think about a situation when you have lost your husband to AIDS and within a few days of his death, your in-laws throw you and your daughter (who tested negative) out of the house,” she says.
Having borne the trauma and stigma of being HIV+, Pravasini today works for the welfare and empowerment of people with HIV through Kalinga Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS (KNP+), a Bhubaneswar-based NGO she co-founded in 2006.
The NGO provides counselling to those living with HIV. “Our priority is to give them the dignity of living and the medical help they deserve, but are often denied,” Pravasini says. Informing that the state has about 37,000 HIV positive people, Pravasini says a whopping 14,300 of them are women.
“Most of them are widows who have contracted the virus from their husbands. It happens very often that these women are ostracized by their village communities and left on the streets to fend of themselves. They are not even aware that the government has certain provision and pensions for the poor, widows and HIV affected,” she says.
Apart from creating awareness in cities and villages of the state, the NGO also helps people living with HIV and AIDS in getting government benefits, conducts advocacy programmes while also working on rehabilitation of HIV positive people in special cases.
Pravasini cites the case of a pregnant woman in Daruthenga village near Chandaka, Bhubaneswar, who was denied medical help at the village’s health centre because she was HIV positive.
“Taking her case as an example, we conducted an awareness programme in the village to convince people that HIV is not a communicable disease and that an HIV positive person has the same rights as us to live a dignified life,” she says.
But, all cases are always not resolved the same way. “Sometimes despite our intervention, the village or family of an HIV positive person refuses to accept them,” she says narrating an incident where a woman who contracted the disease through blood transfusion during childbirth was ostracized by her village.
“The child was also born HIV positive and despite her husband reluctance to leave her, the village elders pressured him to let her go. No amount of convincing worked on them. After her husband divorced her, we helped her get married to another HIV positive person,” she says.
So, what transformed Pravasini from a hapless widow, who just wanted to give a decent life to her daughter, to an activist who now is a guardian figure for those in distress? Pravasini says it was an encounter with a group of HIV positive people during a meeting by Orissa State AIDS Control Society (OSACS).
“After meeting them I realized that my story wasn’t the only one. There were many like me, whose plight was worse compared to mine. And they needed help. KNP+ was in the planning stage and when the group asked me to join, I genuinely felt an urge to say yes,” she says.
In her decade long tryst Pravasini has received many accolades. But the most rewarding has been when she has been able to change a life.
“Thanks to a lack of awareness, people treat HIV as a death sentence. But we assure them it doesn’t necessarily leads to AIDS and they too like others can lead a normal life. I tell them ‘look at me. Am I dead yet?’ (laughs). And the positivity that we bring in them is my real reward,” she adds.
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