On a recent trip to India, which now has more people living with
HIV than any other country in the world, Professor David Gere spent
time addressing some of the issues and stigmas of the disease
through art.
According to the 2006 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic, there
are now 5.7 million adults and children living with HIV in India,
surpassing South Africa, which has 5.5 million people living with
HIV. The number accounts for two-thirds of the HIV cases in
Asia.
Though the number of people in India living with HIV is larger
than anywhere else in the world, the percentage is not as high as
some other areas.
The United Nations reported that 0.9 percent of adults in India
are living with HIV. In comparison, the report found that 18.2
percent of adults in South Africa are living with HIV.
Gere, a UCLA professor of world arts and cultures, has chosen to
respond to this crisis by creating a network of artists who address
HIV prevention, education and stigma reduction.
“In the United States and South Africa, artists have been
instrumental in shifting the weight of stigma away from people who
have HIV,” said Gere, who is the director of the Make
Art/Stop AIDS Organization, a program that uses art to address
stigmas and other issues surrounding AIDS.
“(Artists) also played a key role in goading governmental
agencies to make treatments available,” he added.
Gere lived and worked in India after finishing college in the
1970s. He then worked as a dance critic in San Francisco during the
emergence of the AIDS epidemic in the U.S. in the mid-1980s and
wrote a book about the experience.
He found himself drawn back to India when he realized that the
“arc of the disease was rising,” and decided a couple
of years ago to turn the focus of his work to India.
Gere spent his recent trip to the region overseeing the
psychological effectiveness of a variety of the art projects that
his organization helps to develop.
He has employed the help of UCLA Professor Thomas Coates, who
researches the behavioral psychology of AIDS prevention, to
evaluate the efficacy of these projects.
Gere said the art projects range from large ones, such as a
television show that reaches over 100 million people and features a
detective who is HIV positive, to smaller ones, such as a project
that adapts scroll painting, a practice traditionally used to teach
aspects of religion, to address HIV issues, he said.
According to the UNAIDS report, HIV cases in India are
predominantly transmitted through heterosexual intercourse.
“India is a male-dominated society where men can be
sexually promiscuous,” said UCLA public health Professor
Snehendu Kar.
Men often have multiple sex partners; additionally, an increased
movement to urban areas is accompanied by an increase in
prostitution, he said.
The mechanism for transmission is thus very different from that
of the early stages of the epidemic, when transmission was
primarily due to homosexual intercourse and the use of intravenous
drugs, Kar said.
He said the government of India has traditionally been in denial
that there is such a big problem.
But Gere said the government that came to power in the past two
years is more open to seeking solutions and may have contributed to
a reported decrease of cases in four states.
Gere said he believes the greatest concerns are insufficient
spread of information about HIV, lack of care for preventing
mother-to-child transmission, and too little access to
antiretroviral treatment.
India is home to 70 percent of the people needing treatment in
Asia, and less than 10 percent of those in need are receiving that
treatment, according to the UNAIDS report.
Campaigns in South Africa have resulted in a lowering of
antiretroviral-treatment prices, but India has seen none of that
success, he said.
Access to antiretroviral treatment is only part of the
problem.
Though developing countries have received sizable donations from
foundations that focus on improving health and reducing poverty,
there is also a need for money and infrastructure to provide
education, detection and case management, Kar said.
Kar said one positive for India may be the country’s
familiarity with public conversations regarding family
planning.
“Sex education has been a problem (in India), but India
has been talking about family planning for 30 or 40 years,”
he said. “The word “˜condom’ is not a shocking
word there.”