MDACS feels proud of the success story of Project Parivartan, how the project has helped a Redressal Cell volunteer in finding a steady job as a counselor at an ART Centre despite not being very highly educated.
The very objective of Project Parivartan was to help PLHIV survive in our society and to help them access their rights.
Read the interview below to see how this has come about so soon after the Project Parivartan came about.
Background
Vanita Doiphode has recently been appointed as a Peer Coordinator at an ART Centre in KEM hospital. For her this feat is one of her biggest achievements so far and is excited about her new role.
With more than 5 years of experience as a PLHA counsellor and outreach worker; she started volunteering at the Redressal Cell in KEM Hospital in November, 2011. Volunteering at the Redressal cell was a novel experience as the Redressal cell concept was just started in 2011 by MDACS. Very soon, an announcement for the position of a peer coordinator at the ART Cell was made, and one of her colleagues (a counsellor affiliated with MDACS) urged Vanita to apply.
At first, although Vanita found this to be a great opportunity of growth within the ART domain especially for volunteers at the Redressal cell, she was apprehensive whether she would be considered for the position.
But with the help of her peers in the ART Centre, she mustered the courage and wrote an application letter and applied for the job. She was called for the interview and it was then that she realised that she was the only candidate with an SSC level education while the rest of the 12 candidates had an education level of above 12 Std. But she adds that as soon as the interview started, her nervousness disappeared and she spoke confidently about her experience and skills. She was selected on that same day for the position.
Vanita gives credit for her rise from a volunteering role to that of a peer coordinator to her other PLHA colleagues and MDACS for opening up such an avenue for her.
More than your average Mumbaikar….
At first glance, Vanita Doiphode is like any other, ordinary person in this city; working and travelling like a million others. But she has seen a lot more than your average Mumbaikar. And her day-to-day experiences are tales of struggle, hope and what can be called the triumph of the human spirit. Vanita is HIV-positive, and she has over the years, worked as an outreach worker and counsellor in government hospitals and testing centres, helping out others like herself who’re in need to care and support.
Prior to her role as an ART centre volunteer, she recounts her experiences in the PPTCT (Prevention of Parent to Child Transmission) centres in a suburban Mumbai hospital where her primary role was educating HIV-positive pregnant women about the disease and its risks to the child. Many of the women, she says, did not have any prior knowledge about HIV in those days, and thus, there were misconceptions about the disease that were very common. It was her job as the outreach worker to share her example with these women and motivate them to continue their pregnancies and to not take drastic measures like abortion or suicide.
One patient, she recalls, had hid her status from her family, and during her labour one hospital refused to operate upon her due to her HIV status. Vanita tactfully explained the complication to the woman’s family whilst not disclosing her status, and ensured that the hospital went forward with the delivery, and even submitted a formal complaint against the staff the next day. In another instance, she carried a two-day old baby to a city hospital as the local one was short of Nevrapine.
What motivates Vanita…
When asked about what motivates her to go out of her way and quite literally so, to help out these women, she smiles and says that it is the welfare of the child that motivates her.
While it is implausible and indeed impossible to blame anyone for becoming infected, HIV transmission to the child is avoidable and should be the responsibility of the parents as well as the hospital and medical staff. “Why should an innocent life suffer because of stigma?” She asks poignantly.
Challenges that she faces….
Not all of Vanita’s work can be seen through such rose-tinted vision, and she is quick to caution us against this. Self-stigma, she says, is even more dangerous than being stigmatised by society. Issues of morality block the need to question and the desire to come forward among HIV-positive people and this is a huge setback to efforts made by people like her. She says that by ascribing HIV infection to only sexual acts stigmatises the disease even more, and this adversely affects children and women who are HIV-positive.
However, she does not seem entirely pessimistic. “There is a great deal of change in perspective, especially among medical professionals and doctors. A decade ago, they were as ignorant as the common public was. But now they are coming forward and helping HIV-positive people by offering more than medical help, by way of counselling and advocacy.” In fact, it were such counsellors, doctors and outreach workers who helped her overcome her own stigma and got her in touch with positive people’s networks.
Her job as a peer coordinator is her hope…
“Charity is one thing,” she says, “job satisfaction, another.” Her profession allows her to interact with others, who like herself seven years ago, are in a state of confusion and in need of knowledge and guidance. A change in perspective is the need of the hour, in her opinion; this will counter both stigma and discrimination on many levels.
In conclusion, she states, both simplistically and profoundly, that “like ‘normal’ people, we too have the right to work, marry and have children and a family. Giving us ‘special treatment’ will only reinforce self-stigma. If we are assured of free first-line treatment, we are free to address other issues concerning our health, like having a healthy diet etc.” Other important issues, like economic ones, the requirement to fill the stomachs of oneself and one’s family are important considerations. And these questions can be addressed only once people like Vanita are assured of equal opportunity of work and leisure; to live and work as independent, ordinary citizens, and yet be involved in rather extraordinary tasks.
And simply put, this is the story of their lives.
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