To an observer’s eye, the long lines at the Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital in Delhi every Friday seem much of a piece with the usual crowds to be found outside any government medical institution. But this is different. Friday is the day most HIV-positive people registered with the hospital come to collect their antiretroviral therapy (ART) drugs for the month. They blend into the crowd with no distinction, waiting in line for their turn like everybody else. The disease that distinguishes them from others is often not mentioned, or is spoken of in low whispers between patients familiar with each other’s history. Most don’t want it to be known that they are HIV-positive or, worse, have one of the most incurable and most stigmatised diseases in the world, AIDS.
The way HIV/AIDS is viewed medically has changed miraculously in the last three decades. Steady developments in medicine, and timely introduction of such medicines, mean that the disease is now considered fairly manageable and not much different from, say, diabetes....
