Bangalore: HIV positive widows, sexuality minorities, sex workers living with HIV/AIDS and social activists working in the area of food security and HIV stressed the need to ensure food security for persons with HIV here on Monday.

At a public hearing of HIV positive persons to talk about food security organised by the Bangalore HIV/AIDS Forum, most participants highlighted the Government apathy in ensuring right to food to the poor and needy and the fact that, HIV positive persons and sexuality minorities do not have access to ration cards.

"Whenever we go to the Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART) centres to take our dosage we are asked to take nutritious food by the doctors. Many of us are barely able to afford one meal a day, where will we get nutritious food," asked Janakamma, an HIV positive person who lost her husband to the disease.

"I have two small children and a mother to support and I work as a domestic servant. For the past one year I have been taking Anti-Retroviral Therapy. But there are times when I am so sick that I cannot go to work and all of us go hungry or just manage to have some rice gruel. I just want enough food for myself and my family," she said.

All persons living with HIV/AIDS should be issued Anthyodaya cards (ration cards given to below poverty line families) to address the problem of food and nutrition, said Anasuya, a member of Milana, a voluntary organisation.

"If we get adequate food every day we can take the Anti-Retroviral Therapy and postpone the inevitable at least for a few years. But the Government should come out with a strategy to distribute these cards to poor HIV/AIDS patients without revealing their identity or health status to prevent stigma and discrimination," she said.

Anasuya lost her husband to AIDS and now both she and her 13-year-old daughter are HIV positive and taking Anti-Retroviral Therapy. "If we had access to good nutritious food earlier, we could have probably postponed the Anti-Retroviral Therapy," she added.

Balakrishna, a hijra, who is part of a sexuality minorities union, said many sex workers and sexuality minorities who were HIV positive were dying because they did not have access to Anti-Retroviral Therapy and to nutritious food.

Pramila Nesargi, Chairperson of the Karnataka State Commission for Women, suggested that the Government could make job reservations for HIV/AIDS persons and that they could be provided free food in their workplace.

She asked the forum to recommend to the Government that on the basis of the hospital card of these patients, they could be issued Anthyodaya cards.

Mahesh Joshi, Director, Doordarshan Kendra, Sheela Ramanathan from Human Rights Law Network and officials from the Food and Civil Supplies Department and Karnataka State AIDS Prevention Society were present.

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