Solomon, Suniti

Initial Denial and Failure to React

For seven years, she could refer her HIV patients only to the Tambaram Sanatorium, built in 1928 as a refuge for patients with tuberculosis. With no concerted efforts to educate the public about the disease, cases of AIDS began to increase. Today, according to the World Health Organization, an estimated 5.13 million people in India are HIV-positive or are afflicted by AIDS-the second-largest population after South Africa. In 1993, Solomon renovated a building that the United States had built to house lepers and founded the YRG Centre for AIDS Research and Education, which is dedicated to using education, counseling, and testing to raise HIV awareness. Later, a virology laboratory and a 26-bed inpatient facility were added. The number of patients cared for at the clinic has increased tenfold since 1993. With the help of drugs that have become less expensive and more readily available, patients are living longer, but the problems that confront them are no less disturbing in a country where the stigma against HIV patients is still strong.

Solomon also has become increasingly committed to gender issues as they relate to HIV. The percentage of Indian women in the affected population has grown from 10 percent in the 1990s to 50 percent. Solomon argues that although long-term goals of empowering women must be met, addressing the immediate need for information and healthcare for women in a culture that denies them access to such services without the permission and financial support of men is crucial to halting what she calls the “feminization of [Page 1374]AIDS.” Solomon currently serves as the president of the AIDS Society of India.

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