NE India’s makeshift fight against AIDS
Aljazeera
As access to treatment increases, the United Nations says the number of people dying from HIV-AIDS is falling worldwide.
But in India, particularly in the northeast, a constant flow of heroin from its opium-producing neighbour is helping to spread both disease and addiction. Of the 270,000 people in the district of Churachandpur, more than one-quarter of the women use some kind of drugs and suffer from HIV; many, due to a lack of financial opportunities, will end up turning to prostitution to feed their addiction.
Despite this cycle, in an area the size of Barbados, there are no long-term treatments facilities for those suffering from addiction or HIV.
Al Jazeera’s Prerna Suri, in Churachandpur, reports on a cycle that disproportionately affects the women of India’s northeast.
