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HIV Test First, Marriage Later - Punjab Village's Motto    

           MANUKE (Ludhiana): A village in Punjab has made pre-marital AIDS test mandatory in an effort to check the spread of the HIV virus. Manuke, a big hamlet in Ludhiana district, is the second village in the country after Hiware Bazar, a remote village in Maharashtra, to take such a decision. The Maharastra village decided last November that no marriage would be registered without the couple taking the Enzyme Link Immuno Sorbent Assay or ELISA, an AIDS virus detection test.

           The village council of Manuke has, however, decided not to allow marriage of any resident of the village without conducting an ELISA test on the would-be spouse. Home to about 10,000 people, Manuke has seen 12 deaths due to AIDS in the past five years. The last such case took place only two months back. Most of the victims were truck drivers. Gurmukh Singh Sandhu, village head, took the decision last week and the villagers welcomed it.

           "In our village, around 12 deaths have taken place due to AIDS. Because of this we have decided that HIV test has become all the more necessary," said Jagmohan Singh, an unmarried villager. "Yes, the test should take place. People match horoscopes before marriage, but they should get the HIV test done and match the horoscopes afterwards," commented Harinder Kaur, another villager.

          Manuke is not the only Punjab village which has seen AIDS deaths. A couple of AIDS-related deaths have also been reported from the adjoining villages of Lamhi, Hathoor, Bhamipura, Dedhka, and Bassian. Here too it was mainly the truck drivers who were affected. According to Gurmukh Singh Sandhu, while there was hardly any village in the State which has not witnessed a single death due to AIDS, Manuke had decided to spread awareness about the disease rather than keep the whole thing shrouded in secrecy.

           "The people have become cautious. Earlier, people had no information about it, but now even the children know that AIDS is a killer disease. They will stay away from it and advise their relatives and family members to keep off from it", Singh added. Manuke's decision, however, goes against the National AIDS Control Organisation's guidelines which disapprove of pre-marital HIV tests.

           In a recent report, the UN estimated that 7.2 million people in Asia-Pacific region are carrying HIV, with infection rates in parts of India reaching as high as 20 per cent. Currently, India has four million HIV-positive or AIDS patients, making it second only to South Africa, and some studies estimate that the numbers could balloon past 20 million by 2010.

Bangalore Wakes Up to Curb Female Foeticide (Go To Top)

Horror stories of fully-developed female foetuses being found in drains and
canals in Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana are not uncommon

          BANGALORE: Alarmed by the sharp rise in female foeticide, doctors and administrators in Bangalore have started a joint drive against illegal sex determination. Authorities in Karnataka were shocked when a recent census revealed that the female ratio in the 0-6 age group had fallen to 927 females per 1,000 males, the lowest in 15 years. The figures were proof of the increased incidence of sex-selective abortions or female foeticide in Karnataka, not an isolated phenomenon but an alarming trend in many States.

           Latest studies indicate that in 2002, Karnataka had over 160,000 terminated pregnancies, 97 per cent of which were for the female child. Doctors attribute this alarming rise in foeticide to the rampant misuse of ultra-sonography, which allows for easy and cheap sex-determination. The going rate for an ultrasound examination (read sex determination) is as less as Rs 80. The Government has now issued notices to all centres using ultra-sound scanning to register with the Government. But analysts say it is impossible to curb its misuse.

          DS Ashwath, District Magistrate, Bangalore, admits to the complexity of the problem and says it is the people themselves who must act as "social audits". "(Our) intention is to create social awareness. People themselves should act as social audit for such activities, they should have a social boycott for such activites. It cannot be a one-man show, least of all from a female because she is subordinate to so many people in the family," said Aswath.

           Yet another reason for the rise in the female foeticide in the State is the misuse of medical termination of pregnancy (MTP) or abortion. On an average, there are nearly six to seven pregnancies terminated every month in each district and reports are silent on the sex of the foetus. With lax laws and cheap costs of abortion and sex determination, female foeticide has even upstaged female infanticide. The problem, however, is not restricted to Karnataka alone. Horror stories of fully-developed female foetuses being found in the drains and canals in Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana are not uncommon.

          Srimani Rajagopalan, president, Bangalore Society of Obstetrics and Gynaeocology, links the problem to a basic lack of education. "(The problem is due to) lack of education ... and women have no say ... women empowerment is not there. Women are not educated. When you see the States where education is good like Kerala, female foeticide is less while in areas where education is less like Bihar and Rajasthan ... female foeticide is more," said Rajagopalan. In many States, women are blamed for bearing a girl. In most cases they are harassed and often face abandonment.

           "I have two daughters. I am three months pregnant. I have come to find out the sex of the baby. If I again give birth to a female baby, my husband will marry again. They are already ill-treating me and harassing me. I don't want an abortion which means losing my own womb, but what to do if it's a female this time also, my husband will marry again. They are forcing me," said Suhana, who admits that she will have to abort her child, if it is not a male. Suhana's case is not isolated; two million foetuses are killed in India every year through abortion, simply because they are female.

-ANI  


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