PLHA People Living with HIV / AIDS
Tamil Nadu is among the Indian States with the highest percentage of HIV positive people. Socio-economic local conditions (such as a high urbanisation rate, the abandonment of the agricultural sector and the dismal conditions of life and work in big cities) favour the rapid spread of the virus. Describing HIV/AIDS in India cannot be a sterile tale confined to the suffering in hospitals - most patients often don’t even get that far.I followed the flows of migrants from the rural South to the industrialised North of the State, where cities are growing with absolutely no criteria. I have searched during the night open air dormitories such as bus stations, where migrants newly arrived in the cities seek refuge: people condemned to perform physically engaging and badly paid jobs, with no warranty and safeguard whatsoever. I have visited homes with women left alone to live with the virus they have gotten from their husbands. Men come back from the city, from its fatigue and its entertainments, from the hard work and from promiscuous sexual lifestyles, and all they leave behind for their wives to inherit is the disease.