Sangeeta's story: Talking to sex workers about HIV and AIDS
27 November 2007
Related pages: India country profile
| Millennium Development Goal 5: HIV & AIDS
 Image courtesy of Srinivasan Venkatraman/PATH
All her life, Sangeeta has lived in a red light district of Kolkata. Her
mother, aunt and the family friend who raised her were all sex workers. Growing
up in these circumstances, Sangeeta saw for herself the reality of HIV and AIDS,
and was determined to do something to help. So,
no sooner had she left school than she started working for the Sonagachi
Project, an HIV intervention programme run by the Durbar, a large collective of
sex workers. Spreading the message of safe sex amongst her own neighbours,
Sangeeta began a career dedicated to raising awareness of HIV
prevention.
Through the DFID-backed
 National AIDS Control Programme, Sangeeta now
travels across India meeting people from different social groups, talking to
them and getting them to think about HIV and AIDS. As a member of the health organisation
PATH,
her role is to engage with people on a one-to-one level, listening to
their experiences and giving them the information they need to stay healthy.
Interpersonal communication is at the heart of the PATH project, and, as Sangeeta's experiences show, it
is a powerful way to combat HIV and AIDS.
Listening, not just lecturing
When, in late 2006, the PATH project took her to the northern state of Bihar,
Sangeeta saw it as a golden opportunity to reach lots of new people. "For me Bihar was a land of untold promise for working with key groups,"
she says. "Not a
lot has happened there in terms of mobilising these groups for HIV prevention or
for claiming their rights." PATH trains people such as sex workers,
truck drivers and injecting drug users to encourage safe practices among their
peers. Sangeeta explains how she and her
PATH colleagues set about changing attitudes:
"(We got them to) think critically about their own lives and the risks they
take, understanding what makes them take those risks and what stops them from being
safe, finding their own solutions for reducing their risks and taking charge to
transform those ideas and solutions into action."
And, Sangeeta reports, this approach had a real impact on those she talked
to:
"They were really taken aback by what we shared, and excited too. They said
they thought working on HIV was about thrusting condoms on to people and
‘telling’ them to use them because it was ‘good’ for them. Nobody ever stopped
to ask them why they were taking risks or not using condoms in the first place."
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A social movement waiting to happen
Sangeeta points to the example of one particular woman, a sex worker. This
woman felt that Sangeeta's approach to HIV and AIDS education was a lot more
effective than the methods she had encountered in the past. She was used to
being approached by charity workers who tried to force condoms on her, but
Sangeeta treated her as an individual, and gave good advice. "I never paid any
attention (to the charity workers)," the woman admitted. "But from what you are
saying, the way to fight HIV is to decide for myself and take charge of my own
life and my body – I like that!"
And Sangeeta has seen how dialogue can make a difference
even in very strained situations. For instance, when she arrived in Muzaffarpur, local sex workers were in turmoil following a
murder in the area. The police were treating sex workers with suspicion and
threatening them with arrest, and there was a lot of fear in the air. The PATH
team got representatives from local NGOs and women's groups to work out, with
local sex workers, an action plan for handling the crisis. Soon, a way forward
was agreed upon, and calm was restored.
Listening to people and helping them towards solutions that work for them,
individually, is central to Sangeeta's work. The results she has seen so far
make her confident that the PATH approach can change attitudes on a wide scale.
"I think Bihar is a big social movement of key groups waiting to happen," she
says hopefully. "And I would like to think that my friends and I have helped to
ignite a tiny flame of that movement through our work."
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Key Facts
- DFID provided £95 million between 2005 and 2007 to the Government of
India’s National Aids Control Programme (NACP).
- DFID worked in partnership with National Aids Control Organisation (NACO)
to implement the second phase of NACP, focussing on the promotion of
safer behaviour among high risk groups to prevent the contraction and
spreading of HIV.
- DFID has committed £102 million in support of the third phase of the
National AIDS Control Programme (NACP III). This will run from 2007/08
to 2011/12 (comprising £95 million in financial aid and £7 million in
technical cooperation) and will help to scale up HIV prevention
programmes to cover 80% of high risk groups. Financial Aid will be
pooled with finance from the World Bank, as a joint contribution to NACP
III.
- PATH is an international non-profit organisation. Its mission is "to
improve the health of people around the world by advancing technologies,
strengthening systems, and encouraging healthy behaviors." PATH's
interpersonal communication programme operates in seven of the Indian
states with the highest HIV prevalence. In Bihar, working with the
Bihar State AIDS Control
Society, PATH aimed to train people within at-risk groups to talk to their peers
about HIV and AIDS and encourage safe practices.
- There are 5.2 million people living with HIV in India – two-thirds
of all infected people in Asia.
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