Students discuss problem of AIDS epidemic in South Asia

When asked what country has the highest percentage of its population infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, most people would be surprised to hear that India is the answer. Students organizing a year-long project focusing on that country, with the goal of increasing understanding of AIDS in the Penn community, held their inaugural meeting Tuesday night. The project, called AIDS in India, is this year's installment of the Penn Interdisciplinary Dialogues on AIDS. Over 50 students and staff members gathered to learn about the history and epidemiology of the disease in South Asia in Logan Hall's Class of 1965 Terrace for the first of nine meetings to be held this year. The program's purpose is to forge links among different disciplines that are in some way related to the disease, according to fifth-year Medical Anthropology doctoral student Tonya Taylor, PIDA's founder and current advisor. Taylor said AIDS is not just a political issue, a biological issue or a cultural issue. Rather, "it's a combination of all of those things and more," she said. The Penn Center for AIDS Research sponsors PIDA, which last year -- its first -- focused on AIDS in Africa. Concentrating on a different region each year gives a geographical context to the discussions, Taylor said. The session began with an introduction to the topic of AIDS in India, with two members of the student-run project's executive board -- College and Engineering senior Neel Gandhi and College senior Humaira Zafar -- discussing such topics as geography, access to health care and the social structure in India. Fourth-year Medical student Scott Halpern then gave a presentation on the epidemiology of HIV and AIDS. "India was actually spared of the disease for the first six or seven years that it was known," Halpern said. Now, however, India -- with the world's second-largest population -- has the largest prevalence of HIV of any nation in the world, with 0.45 percent of the population infected, he added. Coming from a historical perspective, second-year History and Sociology of Science doctoral student Ian Hardy then told the story of the smallpox epidemic in South Asia, encouraging the audience to think about connections between the smallpox epidemic and AIDS. After each presentation, some audience members asked questions and contributed their own knowledge of the subject of AIDS in India. But some who attended were not already familiar with the topic. Avani Trivedi, a third-year student at the University of Sciences in Philadelphia, a native of India, said that though she "always knew that AIDS was a major problem," she was unaware of the statistics or background of the epidemic in India. Topics of future meetings will range from anthropology and sociology to politics and human rights. The next meeting, scheduled for October 13, will concern women and children in India and their relationship to the disease.