Recently some of my friends and I visited an organisation called ACCEPT. It takes care of AIDS patients and dispatches advice on how to help prevent the disease in India.
We spent a day at the organisation. Some of us played with HIV + children who are mostly the children of AIDS patients. Most children born HIV+, donot have a lifespan that exceeds 10 years.
After we had spent enough time with the children, we were educated on the disease. We learnt that because of the lack of education, many suffer from the disease. Most of the victims do not realise they are infected until they reach the last stages.
Their world comes crashing down as once they are labelled as AIDS patients, their own families disown them and add to their emotional torture.
Since they are poor, they cannot afford the expensive treatment which will help increase their life span even by 30 years !
Victims of AIDS in India are discriminated by their family members and loved ones, similar to the caste discrimination which is still evident in many places. They become outcasts.
People don't realise that people with AIDS are only human and they too have emotions just as we do. They fail to recognise their emotional, physical and mental needs.
The bottom line is we need to be educated extensively on the subject and the education must be imparted as early as possible, even to children, afterall, children are the future of our planet.