AIDSfree appeal: For trans women struggling to find help, you are life-savers

Adam Withnall7 January 2019

A centre in Delhi is providing a lifeline for transgender women at risk from HIV.

The Samarth clinic on the outskirts of the capital is run by the India HIV/Aids Alliance and supported by the Elton John AIDS Foundation. It targets communities which have been missed by India’s public anti-Aids operation.

While the country as a whole reports a relatively low HIV prevalence rate of 0.2 per cent, that rises to 7.4 per cent among transgender women.

An estimated 87 per cent of trans women in India earn money either as sex workers or by begging in the street. They struggle to earn a living elsewhere because of the stigma they face in the workplace.

“You still see a lot of bullying in the educational institutions, if you are a gender-­variant child or expressing a different sexuality, and there are no supportive environments to stop them dropping out. And so these children are already trapped into a vicious circle of poverty,” says the charity’s associate director Abhina Aher.

“Because you don’t have an education you cannot seek employment, and you’re trapped in a situation where you can’t earn money, you’re not contributing to the economy, and at the same time you are indulging in high-risk sexual behaviour.”

One trans woman being helped, Boby, fell into sex work when she was struggling for a place to stay. She has lost track of the precise number of times she has been gang-raped. She thinks it is between eight and 10. “Every time it has been without condom,” she says. “Every time I was badly beaten.”

She has sex with 15 to 20 clients a night.

She now comes to the clinic for regular testing, as well as for its sense of community. She is not HIV positive, and attributes that to the support and education provided by Samarth.

She says she now always insists on clients using a condom. “Someone from the team is continuously in my ear, telling me — protection, protection, protection. Even in the event that there is a client that pushes for unprotected sex, at least I know where to go afterwards. So that security is there.”

Yoginder, 27, worked as an office boy for an architecture firm in Delhi. She identifies as a transgender woman but was forced to hide this at work, wearing men’s clothes.

The only time she could express herself was at night, when she would go to popular cruising hotspots and pick up men. She contracted HIV.

When the initial test showed as reactive for the virus, her first thought was of suicide, she says. “I thought my life was over.”

Samarth’s counselling saved her life — and gave her a new family. She calls the member of the team who first talked her through that time her “mother”, the others at the clinic ­“sister”.

“Slowly, slowly I came to understand that my life is important, I don’t want to die. My health is now much better.”

She has even found a new job as a security guard for a college that puts on workshops with the Samarth clinic, where she won’t have to hide her identity. “I am HIV positive and I am a member of the trans community,” she says. “And I accept both those things.”

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