40 years after AIDS, remembering Dominic D’Souza, the first Indian diagnosed with HIV infection

 D’Souza’s legacy as an activist far outstrips the treatment it receives in the film ‘My Brother… Nikhil’.

June 2021 will mark the 40th anniversary of the discovery of AIDS, a sobering reality in the face of the current Covid-19 pandemic. While the Indian variant of the coronavirus continues to take its toll in a deadly second wave, Goa has presently recorded the highest rate of infections in India despite being its smallest state.

This dubious distinction sits alongside another virus-related history-making association with Goa. May 27 marks the death anniversary of Dominic D’Souza from AIDS-related causes in 1992 soon after being diagnosed, in Goa, as the first person in India to have become infected with HIV.

Dominic D'Souza.

Much of what has been written about D’Souza’s diagnosis has veered towards the sensational, obscuring his life’s work as an AIDS activist. Take this newspaper account from 2017 on the 25th anniversary of his death:

 “On 14 February 1989, D’Souza … was summoned [by the] … police… [H]e was handcuffed and taken to Asilo Hospital in Mapusa, where doctors gathered around him. They didn’t touch him but asked him several questions: Did he have sex with prostitutes, was he a homosexual, did he inject drugs? It was only when he saw a nurse pass by holding a file with the words ‘AIDS’ printed on its cover that D’Souza realized that he was HIV-positive.”  

If this recounting of events appears cinematic, consider that the report also highlights a commemorative event that was held in Mumbai to mark D’Souza’s death anniversary, one that included the screening of the 2005 film My Brother… Nikhil. The gay-themed film, directed by the mononymous Onir, fictionalises the events of D’Souza’s life and death as the first person in India found to be HIV-positive, yet contains no allusion to the inspiration it drew from the activist’s life.

A remarkable elision

Writing in 2017 about the genesis of his film, Onir reminisced:

 “And how can the stigma go? Through understanding…no other way. Maybe cinema helps. As for My Brother Nikhil (my 2005 film on the life of D’Souza), it’s more the case that the subject found me instead of the other way around. I was hosting a documentary talk show … when I came across D’Souza’s story. It was so powerful that it lingered and I couldn’t shake it off. I had been working on another script, which was supposed to be my first film, but I was now consumed by the urge to make this movie.”  

For Onir, D’Souza was never more than someone to fictionalise in a film. Onir admitted as much in the afterword to the 2011 published version of his screenplay: “I remembered having edited some documentary material on Dominique De Souza…But I did not want to tell Dominique’s story. Nikhil was born out of Dominique but ultimately became a different person.”

Not only does Onir get D’Souza’s name wrong here, but that name is altogether absent in the film’s credits. If D’Souza’s story was so inspirational to Onir, what is to be made of this remarkable elision? 

Ultimately, the film plays as an act of co-option through the omission of D’Souza’s name for the purpose of foregrounding, essentially, a gay-themed story that is exclusive of D’Souza.

Because narrative is built upon the history of a real person, it takes the form of a biopic. But even as biopics are expected to be fictionalisations of reality, artifice exceeds the truth in Onir’s retelling by never acknowledging the person the film is ostensibly about within the filmic vehicle itself.

The genre of the biopic is used in the case of My Brother… Nikhil to disappear the real, for its investment is not in telling D’Souza’s history as something that actually happened. Rather, My Brother… Nikhil takes D’Souza’s story and accords it other meanings – it shifts the semiotics of HIV-infection from the real-life person’s struggle to the struggles of being gay and Indian. It is then only fitting that D’Souza’s name is never to be seen anywhere in the film.

Undoubtedly, Onir’s choice to transform D’Souza’s story for the express purpose of making a statement about gay discrimination arises from the lacuna around D’Souza’s sexuality – an absence the film must obscure while using his story to tell a tale about a specific kind of sexuality. D’Souza’s sexuality has often been the subject of speculation, conjecture readily giving way to the assuredness of the activist’s queerness.

Dominic D’Souza.

A case in point is Benjamin Law’s 2014 reportage of his conversation with Anand Grover, the lawyer who took up D’Souza’s discrimination case:

 

“Anand had worked extensively in cases relating to homosexuality and HIV since the late 1980s, when he represented Dominic D’Souza, a gay man who was fired after being diagnosed as HIV-positive … After D’Souza died, Anand became obsessed. Gay men approached him for representation if they were being blackmailed.“

Though Grover is Law’s source of information about D’Souza, Law does not say that it was the lawyer who told him of D’Souza’s sexuality; this void around Law’s source of information raises questions about its credibility.

For Law, it is sufficient that Grover took on cases of homosexual- and HIV-discrimination to then decide that these two requirements are synonymous and proof of D’Souza’s sexuality. Law’s book is titled Gaysia: Adventures in the Queer East, a tongue-in-cheek choice of name. An Australian of Asian origin, Law’s book is an attempt to understand gay sexuality in Asia, with Law himself serving as a cultural informant between West and East. 

“Research” of this nature continues to demonstrate how fact and fiction dissolve into one another so glibly when it comes to the matter of D’Souza’s life.

The popularisation of D’Souza’s story is not solely the territory of Onir’s film, as far as fictionalisations go. When a character in The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay, Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi 2009 novel, discovers he has been infected with the HIV virus, he laments to his boyfriend: “Do you know how they treat people like me? A guy in Goa was locked up in a sanatorium when they found out he had it.”

Apparently calling upon the stigma attached to being HIV-positive in India, the character’s allusion is an obvious reference to what happened to D’Souza. Shanghvi’s novel, like Onir’s film, abstracts D’Souza’s life to emotionally attach the trauma of HIV-infection to the plight of gay men. In both cases, the invisibilisation of D’Souza still relies on the notoriety of the real-life events and the plausibility of HIV-infection due to homosexuality.

That Onir chose D’Souza’s story as the vehicle through which to raise awareness about the plight of middle-class gay men in India springs from the convenient linkages the director makes between what happened to D’Souza and HIV/AIDS-discrimination generally, these matters slipping into one another because of their possible association with sexuality. If for these reasons, then, it is immaterial if D’Souza was gay, for his story is meant to serve the greater good required of it by the director as self-positioned gay rights advocate.

In this vein, the film’s purposeful deployment of D’Souza’s story is about cleaving AIDS activism from gay rights activism, despite the relationship between the two. This is equally a historical distortion of D’Souza’s own labours as an advocate for the rights of those with HIV/AIDS; his Positive People, which My Brother… Nikhil itself references (renaming it People Positive) is an NGO that serves anyone with the disease, regardless of sexuality.

As a figure whose struggles as India’s Patient Zero, in the era of the global recognition of the AIDS crisis, were nationally known, D’Souza’s life lends itself to the cinematic as being the story of an individual who courageously fought a legal battle against discrimination. It is this individuality that My Brother… Nikhil borrows and transforms.

In Onir’s film, the political implications of the protagonist Nikhil’s HIV-diagnosis develops as My Brother… Nikhil progresses. Prior to this, as the title itself suggests, My Brother… Nikhil occupies itself in presenting an intimate portrait of a brother, but also a son and lover through the personal reminisces offered by the main character’s inner circle. That this young man who loves his family and is a source of pride to them must deal with later disapprobation is what operationalises the intimacy the film develops, connecting it with the film’s political agenda.

In the sharing of the personal through the narration of the film by Nikhil’s intimates, My Brother… Nikhil offers its audience a central character who could very much be like them in his commonplace attachment to loved ones. Consequently, this expands the potential of My Brother… Nikhil beyond being a film only about gay issues; it is then also positioned as a film meant for more than an exclusively gay audience, even as its motivation is to champion gay rights.

Dominic D’Souza.

That an otherwise ordinary person could face discrimination because of a health problem, makes Nikhil’s struggle, in My Brother… Nikhil, the stuff of quotidian existence; that, like D’Souza, Nikhil decides to turn a personal struggle into an opportunity for advocacy then elevates the personal, and intimate, into the political. By conferring upon Nikhil’s journey from ordinary citizen to public advocate the storyline of the genesis of HIV/AIDS in India, as well as the attendant issue of gay rights that My Brother… Nikhil develops by borrowing from D’Souza’s AIDS-activism, the personal is not only made public but also heroic. Yet, while creating a cinematic and tragic hero in Nikhil for the cause of gay rights, D’Souza’s story as an early pioneer of AIDS-activism in South Asia is cleaved from the very film it inspired.

Even though it borrows the contexts and settings of D’Souza’s Goa to create itself, My Brother… Nikhil makes Nikhil and his family – the Kapoors – ethnically part-North Indian, so that they appear more Indian than had they been distinctly Goan. Part of how My Brother… Nikhil eclipses D’Souza’s story is also then in its misrepresentation of his ethnic background, and the obscuring of the Catholic cultural background of his family, in order to create a cognisably Indian filmic milieu for the consumption of a Hindi-speaking national audience.

Because the Kapoors must be identifiably Indian, the fact that the D’Souzas had spent a significant amount of time in East Africa is something the film would have no room for. The D’Souzas’ East African past is no anomaly given the history of Goan travel and residence in that part of the world from colonial times. Were the film to acknowledge such circuits of Goan identity as they are informed by the extra-national existences of Goans might have perhaps allowed it to gesture at shared postcolonial legacies and the still looming crisis of AIDS in the developing world.

Re-centring D’Souza’s Goanness may allow for a rethinking of the possibility of decolonial queer activism in South Asia, for it is precisely the far more complex reality of the figure of D’Souza, which My Brother… Nikhil leaves out, that may present a queer politics of affiliation unbeholden to the concept of nation and nationalism.

While My Brother… Nikhil uses the form of the biopic to represent the HIV/AIDS-stigmatisation of gay middle-class men in an Indian setting, the film would not have been more judicious in actually being a biopic about Dominic D’Souza. The same is also true of any claim that could be made to the veracity of D’Souza’s sexuality, for a film about HIV/AIDS could also be about gay identity. D’Souza’s legacy continues to exist despite its misrepresentations in Onir’s film, so there is little that a possibly more “authentic” biopic could offer.

Instead, the larger question to be grappled with is how the politics of advocacy, even in the representation of the marginal, can be manipulated cinematically. That cinematic representations of such nature limit the potential of AIDS-activism, and especially in how its advocates could be remembered and their legacies deployed, is worth more complex consideration for their political possibilities.

Certainly, D’Souza’s legacy far outstrips the treatment it receives in Onir’s film. Grover’s defence of D’Souza, when he battled the discrimination he faced for being HIV positive, in turn led to the lawyer drafting an HIV/AIDS Bill that was passed in April 2017. The Human Immunodeficiency Virus and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (Prevention and Control) Act, 2017 thus became the first national HIV law in South Asia that could potentially protect HIV-positive people against discrimination. The afterlife of D’Souza’s activism therefore persists, a legacy that continues to be of importance 40 years into the challenge of HIV/AIDS.

R Benedito Ferrão is an Assistant Professor of English and Asian & Pacific Islander American Studies at William and Mary, Virginia, USA.

Adapted, with permission, from Twenty-five Years after Dominic D’Souza: What Happens When Your Queer Icon Refuses to Be?” by R Benedito Ferrão, pp. 61-83, in Gender, Sexuality, Decolonization: South Asia in the World Perspective, edited by Ahonaa Roy (Routledge 2021).

(Source: Scroll)

UK man becomes second person ever cured of HIV

 No active viral load detected in Adam Castillejo’s body since he was declared free of HIV last March

A 40-year-old man from London is believed to have become the second person in the world to be cured of HIV.

Adam Castillejo remains free of the virus 30 months after he stopped anti-retroviral therapy, doctors said.

A stem-cell treatment he underwent for a cancer also cured him of HIV, according to study published in medical journal The Lancet.

The first person cured of HIV was Timothy Brown, intially known only as the “Berlin patient”, in 2011. He received a similar treatment and was found to be free of the the virus after three-and-a-half years.

Donors of the stem cells received by Mr Castillejo have an uncommon gene that gives them protection against HIV.

Mr Castillejo, now known in the medical commuity as the “London patient”, has no detectable active HIV viral load in his blood, semen or tissue. He was declared free of the virus just over a year ago.

Doctors say 40-year-old Adam Castillejo is free of HIV 30 months after ending anti-retroviral treatment, due to a stem-cell treatment he received for cancer (Getty Images)

According to scientists, stem cell transplants appear to halt the virus’s ability to replicate itself inside the body by replacing the patient’s own immune cells with donor ones that resist the infection.

Tests carried out on Mr Castillejo suggest 99 per cent of his immune cells have been replaced by donor ones.

Lead researcher Professor Ravindra Kumar Gupta, of the University of Cambridge, told BBC News: “This represents HIV cure with almost certainty. We have now had two and a half years with anti-retroviral-free remission.

“Our findings show that the success of stem-cell transplantation as a cure for HIV, first reported nine years ago in the Berlin patient, can be replicated.”

However, the “high-risk”  stem-cell treatment is aggressive and was primarily used to treat the patient’s cancers, not their HIV.

Existing HIV drugs remain highly effective and enable people living with HIV to live long and healthy lives.

Prof Gupta said the treatment is “only used as a last resort for patients with HIV who also have life-threatening haematological malignancies”.

“Therefore, this is not a treatment that would be offered widely to patients with HIV who are on successful anti-retroviral treatment,” he said.

There is also no absolute certainty that Mr Castillejo or Mr Brown’s HIV will never return, as both patients still have remnants of the virus in their bodies.

Mr Castillejo told the New York Times: “This is a unique position to be in, a unique and very humbling position.

“I want to be an ambassador of hope. I don’t want people to think, ‘Oh, you’ve been chosen.’

“No, it just happened. I was in the right place, probably at the right time, when it happened.”

(Source: The Independent)

HIV-positive sperm bank opens in New Zealand

The world's first sperm bank for HIV-positive donors has launched in New Zealand, aiming to fight stigma surrounding the illness.

Three HIV-positive men have already signed up to donate - all of whom have an undetectable viral load.

This means virus levels in their blood are so low that HIV cannot be transmitted through sex or childbirth.

Sperm Positive was launched by three charities ahead of World Aids Day on 1 December.

Body Positive, the New Zealand Aids Foundation and Positive Women Inc hope the project will educate the public about transmission of HIV, and reduce stigma for those who have the illness.

The online sperm bank will make clear that all its donors are HIV positive

The sperm bank says it will make clear that all donors are HIV positive but on successful treatment that prevents them passing on the virus.

While it does not itself operate as a fertility clinic, Sperm Positive will put people in touch with local fertility clinics if they agree to a match.

One of the three donors, Damien Rule-Neal, told Radio New Zealand that after he revealed his illness to his employer, he was bullied and eventually decided to leave his job.

"We've got the science behind it to say that medication makes you untransmittable," he said. "I've seen a lot of my female friends that have HIV go on to have children, it shows that science and medication have given us that ability back."

Diagnosed in 1999, Mr Rule-Neal is healthy and married, with two children and three grandchildren.

There have been a number of advances in HIV treatment in recent years, including a world-first kidney transplant from one HIV-positive patient to another in March.

Antiretroviral therapy - a daily combination of drugs that prevents HIV from replicating in the body - can lower the amount of the virus in the blood to undetectable levels.

But HIV continues to be one of the world's most serious public health challenges. Approximately 38 million people had HIV/AIDS in 2018.

(Source: BBC)

New Zealand launches world's first HIV positive sperm bank

Effort aims to reduce the stigma experienced by those living with the virus

The world’s first HIV positive sperm bank has been launched in an effort to reduce the stigma experienced by those living with the virus.

Sperm Positive has begun with three male donors from across New Zealand who are living with HIV but have an undetectable viral load, meaning the amount of the virus in a person’s blood is so low that it cannot be detected by standard methods.

Although this does not mean the HIV has been cured, it does mean that the treatment is working well and so the virus cannot be passed on – even through sex without a condom or childbirth.

 The online clinic aims to give people diagnosed with HIV the opportunity to create life and to raise awareness. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

Donor Damien Rule-Neal was diagnosed with HIV in 1999 but was confirmed undetectable after starting treatment some 18 years ago.

He said there was still a lack of education among the public in New Zealand about what an undetectable status meant, and that he had experienced stigma about living with HIV in both his work and personal life.

“I have many friends who are also living with HIV who’ve gone on to have children,” he said.

“Being able to help others on their journey is so rewarding, but I also want to show the world that life doesn’t stop post-diagnosis and help to remove the stigma.”

The online sperm bank said it will be made clear to people looking for a donor that they have HIV but are on effective treatment and so cannot pass the virus on.

The initiative, created by the New Zealand Aids Foundation, Positive Women Inc and Body Positive, hopes to educate people in New Zealand about HIV transmission.

Dr Mark Thomas, an infectious diseases doctor and Auckland University associate professor, said he had seen changes in public opinion after working with those diagnosed with HIV for more than 30 years.

He said: “I’m glad to say that in this time there have been great changes in public understanding of HIV, but many people living with HIV still suffer from stigma.

“Stigma can lead to inconsistent taking of medicines, and result in much less effective treatment of HIV, and risk of transmitting HIV.

“Fear of stigma and discrimination can stop people at risk from getting tested, and those living with HIV from accessing treatment and support.”

As well as informing the public, the online clinic aims to give people diagnosed with the virus the opportunity to create life and to raise awareness that fertility services are available for them.

Sperm Positive said it will not be operating as a fertility clinic and, if a match is agreed by both parties, it will put them in touch with local fertility clinics.

The online bank was launched ahead of World Aids Day 2019, on December 1.

(Source: The Guardian)

HIV used to cure 'bubble boy' disease

US scientists say they used HIV to make a gene therapy that cured eight infants of severe combined immunodeficiency, or "bubble boy" disease.

Results of the research, developed at a Tennessee hospital, were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The babies, born with little to no immune protection, now have fully functional immune systems.

Untreated babies with this disorder have to live in completely sterile conditions and tend to die as infants.

Gael, a patient at St Jude Children's Research Hospital who received treatment, with his mother

The gene therapy involved collecting the babies' bone marrow and correcting the genetic defect in their DNA soon after their birth.

The "correct" gene - used to fix the defect - was inserted into an altered version of one of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Researchers said most of the babies were discharged from the hospital within one month.

David Vetter, who came to be known in the 1970s as the bubble boy

Dr Ewelina Mamcarz of St Jude, an author of the study, said in a statement: "These patients are toddlers now, who are responding to vaccinations and have immune systems to make all immune cells they need for protection from infections as they explore the world and live normal lives."

"This is a first for patients with SCID-X1," she added, referring to the most common type of SCID.

The patients were treated at St Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis and at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital in San Francisco.

What is this syndrome?
The case of David Vetter is perhaps the most famous case of severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID), a disease that made it impossible for him to engage with the world outside a plastic chamber.

Nicknamed "Bubble Boy", Vetter was born in 1971 with the disease and died at the age of 12 after a failed bone marrow transplant.

Within 20 seconds of his birth at the Texas Children's Hospital in Houston, he was placed in a plastic isolation chamber, where he lived until the age of six when he was given a special plastic suit designed by Nasa, the US space agency.

His parents had already lost one child to the disease before he was born.

What are other treatment options?
Currently, the best treatment for SCID-XI is a bone marrow transplant with a tissue-matched sibling donor. But according to St Jude, more than 80% of these patients lack such donors and must rely on blood stem cells from other donors.

This process is less likely to cure the bubble boy disease, and is more likely to cause serious side effects as a result of treatment.

Previous advancements in gene therapy provided alternatives to a bone marrow transplant, but these treatments sometimes involved chemotherapy and had implications for a range of other diseases, including blood disorders, sickle cell anaemia and thalassaemia, and metabolic syndrome.

(Source: BBC)

Tests on London patient offer hope of HIV ‘cure’

Man becomes second person in world to be cleared of virus after stem cell donation

A London patient with HIV has become the second person ever to be free of the virus after a bone marrow transplant, raising hopes of a cure for HIV.

More than a decade ago, Timothy Brown, the so-called Berlin patient who later went public, made history as the first person to be “cured” of HIV. Like the London patient, he had a bone marrow stem cell transplant to treat cancer.

He and the London patient, who does not want to disclose his identity, received stem cells from a donor with a rare genetic mutation of the CCR5 gene, making them HIV-resistant. Brown came off the antiretroviral drugs that suppress HIV and has been virus-free ever since. Scientists now consider him cured. The London patient stopped taking the medication 18 months ago and there is no sign of a return of HIV.

The procedure in itself can never be offered as a cure for HIV infection because stem cell transplants carry risks. People with HIV can stay fit and well with a normal lifespan by taking a daily pill.

But the announcement, said Anton Pozniak, the president of the International Aids Society, marks a critical moment in the hunt for a cure.

“Although it is not a viable large-scale strategy for a cure … these new findings reaffirm our belief that there exists a proof of concept that HIV is curable,” he said.

“The hope is that this will eventually lead to a safe, cost-effective and easy strategy to achieve these results using gene technology or antibody techniques.”

Prof Ravindra Gupta from University College London and lead author of the paper on the successful treatment of the London patient, published in the journal Nature, said the way forward could be editing of the CCR5 gene, which allows HIV to enter cells.

“A field was generated as a result of the Berlin patient looking at CCR5 gene-editing,” he said. “You may have heard of the Chinese babies that were having experimental knockout of that particular gene.”

The Chinese scientist who edited the genes of babies in the womb to make them resistant to HIV was condemned around the world because the experiment was unnecessary and carried risks.

But, said Gupta, CCR5 gene-editing in infected patients was a justifiable goal. “What this second case says is this is a bonafide research target and probably the most promising we have for any HIV cure,” he said.

Although millions of people are now stable and well on antiretroviral drugs, Gupta said, that was not the solution to the Aids epidemic long-term.

“It’s important because there are 36 million-odd people with HIV worldwide. The aim is to get everybody on treatment for the rest of their lives and that’s a huge undertaking both for drug delivery but also making sure people can stay on medication for decades. There is a cost issue for developing countries,” he said.

Brown, from the US, was treated in Germany in 2007. He had acute myeloid leukaemia. The London patient was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2012 and, unlike Brown, did not have radiotherapy, although both had chemotherapy. He remained on antiretroviral drugs for 16 months after the transplant, before he and his doctors decided to stop them.

Regular blood testing has showed no sign of the virus over the past 18 months. After about three years, said Gupta, scientists would feel fairly confident the virus would not come back.

His patient, he said, is very happy. “It’s been a long journey. He’s been very sick for a long time. Obviously the idea of cure and remission has created a certain level of anxiety and hope mixed in with each other.

“We’ve been talking about this for a few years now. It’s been a difficult journey to offer someone this hope and then say we don’t know it’s going to work. So even stopping his HIV treatment – he had to really think about it and it took him a while to finally do it. It’s difficult because you’ve got to put your faith in what doctors are saying to you.”

(Source: The Guardian) 

Singapore says records for 14,200 HIV patients, held by an American, were leaked

Medical records for 14,200 H.I.V.-positive people in Singapore were obtained by an American and illegally disclosed online, officials said Monday, in the second major data breach of the country’s public health system in less than a year.

“We are sorry for the anxiety and distress caused by this incident,” the Health Ministry said in a statement, adding that it had started to contact affected people on Saturday. “Our priority is the well-being of the affected individuals.”

The Singaporean police notified the Health Ministry on Jan. 22 that confidential information from its H.I.V. Registry “may have been disclosed by an unauthorized person,” the statement said. The ministry said it had filed a police report the next day and spent another two days working “with the relevant parties to disable access to the information.”

Though access was successfully disabled, the information “is still in the possession of the unauthorized person, and could still be publicly disclosed in the future,” the statement said. It named that person as Mikhy K. Farrera Brochez, an American citizen who it said had lived in Singapore on an employment pass from January 2008 to June 2016, when he was jailed. Mr. Brochez could not immediately be reached for comment on Monday.

In March 2017, the ministry said, Mr. Brochez was convicted of “numerous fraud and drug-related offenses” and sentenced to 28 months in prison. The fraud offenses included lying to labor officials about his H.I.V. status, providing false information to the police and using forged degree certificates in job applications.

The Singaporean police notified the Health Ministry last week that confidential information from its H.I.V. Registry “may have been disclosed by an unauthorized person.”CreditCreditLuis Enrique Ascui/Reuters

Mr. Brochez has since been deported, the ministry said, and “remains outside Singapore,” although it did not specify where.

The ministry said the illegally published records included names, identification numbers, contact details, H.I.V. test results and related medical information for 5,400 Singaporeans whose infections were diagnosed as recently as January 2013, and 8,800 foreigners diagnosed up to December 2011. They also included personal information for 2,400 people who had been identified through contact tracing, a procedure for minimizing the spread of a virus.

The disclosure of H.I.V. status is especially sensitive in Singapore, a conservative society where gay sex is banned under a British colonial-era law. According to the Ministry of Health, about 450 new cases of H.I.V. infection are reported in Singapore each year, half of which are transmitted through same-sex intercourse.

The attack is the second major data breach of Singapore’s public health system since July, when a cyberattack compromised data from 1.5 million people, including Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, a cancer survivor. Singaporean officials said this month that the perpetrator in that attack “had a clear goal in mind, namely the personal and outpatient medication data of the prime minister.” The government has declined to name the perpetrator, citing national security.

On Monday evening, an official at the Health Ministry referred a reporter to the ministry’s statement on the H.I.V. data breach and declined to comment further.

The Health Ministry said in its statement that “the authorities are seeking assistance from their foreign counterparts.” But it was unclear as of Monday evening whether that included the United States.

Camille Dawson, the counselor for public affairs at the United States Embassy in Singapore, said in an email that the embassy was unable to discuss the specifics of the case because of privacy laws. She added that it also could not comment on continuing investigations.

The Singaporean news media have previously identified Mr. Brochez as a psychologist and former lecturer at Temasek Polytechnic, a university in the city-state. He was reported to have tested positive for H.I.V. shortly after arriving in Singapore, which does not grant employment passes to foreigners with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS.

Mr. Brochez’s partner, Ler Teck Siang, is a Singaporean doctor and former head of the ministry’s National Public Health Unit, which gave him access to the H.I.V. Registry. Prosecutors said that Dr. Ler twice submitted his own blood sample when Mr. Brochez was tested for H.I.V. so that Mr. Brochez could remain employed.

Dr. Ler resigned in January 2014 and was sentenced in November to 24 months in prison for abetting cheating and providing false information to the police and the Ministry of Health. He is appealing his conviction.

In addition, Dr. Ler has been charged with “failing to take reasonable care of confidential information regarding H.I.V.-positive patients,” the ministry said.

The Health Ministry said that it had filed an initial police report in May 2016 after learning that Mr. Brochez might have been in possession of confidential information from the H.I.V. Registry. The police searched the properties of Dr. Ler and Mr. Brochez and seized records, and the people affected by the breach were notified.

But in May of last year, after Mr. Brochez had been deported, the ministry learned that he still had part of the data trove and filed a second police report. At the time, the information did not appear to have been disclosed publicly.

(Source: NYT)

Award-winning photojournalist disappears in China

And here are some of his pics China don’t want you to see

Lu Guang’s photos have exposed the sides of China that its government isn’t keen on talking about: drug addicts, HIV patients, environmental problems, and so on. This time, however, the award-winning photographer has himself become the center of a story. His wife Xu Xiaoli claims she hasn’t heard from her husband since the 3rd of November.

On 23rd October, Guang flew to Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang region, where he had planned to attend some photography events. Later, he was to fly to Sichuan to meet his friend Mr Chen to participate in a charity event. But Mr Chen was unable to find or contact the photographer.

Image credits: Xiaoli11032018

When Mr Chen asked Guang’s wife about his whereabouts, she had nothing. Investigating the situation, Ms Xu contacted the wife of the person who had invited her husband to Xinjiang. She was told both Mr. Lu and the host had been taken away by national security. Local officers from Zhejiang province, Mr Lu’s hometown, later confirmed this.

Worker in Wuhai City, Inner Mongolia. April 10, 2005. Image credits: Lu Guang

“He has been lost for more than 20 days”, said his wife. “As his most direct family member, I have not received any notice of his arrest,” Ms Xu said on Twitter. “I have repeatedly contacted Xinjiang police but have been unable to get through. It is our 20th wedding anniversary [next week]. We should be celebrating it together. I can only hope for his safe return. ”

A heavy truck carrying coal and lime drives away, causing dust to fly
and harming the nearby residents. Image credits: Lu Guang

According to the BBC, Xinjiang has become notorious for its tight security controls, heavy surveillance and police presence, tackling what they describe as growing radicalism among the ethnic Uighur Muslim community.  The government is sensitive to criticism and has detained reporters who were investigating negative stories about China in the past.

Eleven-year-old Xu Li of Hutsou is diagnosed with bone cancer. Image credits: Lu Guang

“The reality in China is you never know if you’re going to get into trouble because there are no written rules,” the photographer said in an interview last year.

Children also live in the industrial district. China is now the world’s second-largest economy. Its economic development has consumed lots of energy and generated plenty of pollution. Image credits: Lu Guang

On 16 July 2010, the pipeline of the Newport Oil Wharf of Dalian Bay exploded, sending lots of oil into the sea. Many fishing boats were assigned to clean up the oil contamination for 8,150 times. Image credits: Lu Guang

The photographer won at the 2004 World Press Photo competition for his exposure of “AIDS villages”, where people 678 people got infected with HIV after selling their blood. Out of 3,000 people, 678 have contracted HIV and 200 have died.

Image credits: Lu Guang

A woman carrying her severely ill grandson implores the sky to prevent the devil of
pain returning. Image credits: Lu Guang

Disabled orphans adopted by charitable farmers. Image credits: Lu Guang

Children with cerebral palsy licks milk powder off a bed to feed. Image credits: Lu Guang

Laseng Temple has an over 200-year-old history, which includes the study of Mongolian medicines. It was seriously polluted by the surrounding factories, so few pilgrims go there now. Image credits: Lu Guang

Many factories have been moved from the country’s east to its central and western parts. Employees work in the dust. Image credits: Lu Guang

The Baotou Steel plant dumps mineral processing sewage into the tailings dam. Image credits: Lu Guang

Image credits: Lu Guang

The chemical industrial park of Yanwei Port in the city of Lianyungang dumps sewage in the sea. Image credits: Lu Guang

In the jeans-producing village of Xintang Town, in Guangdong, workers gain the stone for grinding the denim every morning. Image credits: Lu Guang

Image credits: Lu Guang

A wife cares for her dying husband. Image credits: Lu Guang

Qi Guihua, held here by her husband, fell ill when she returned to the village from Beijing to celebrate the Spring Festival. She died two hours after this photograph was taken. Image credits: Lu Guang

Families such as this one have sold almost everything valuable in their home to help meet medical expenses. Image credits: Lu Guang

A young girl warms her hands in winter. Her father is infected with HIV and
still cares for five children and his elderly parents. Image credits: Lu Guang

Two girls prepare for the funeral of their six-year-old brother, who died from AIDS. Image credits: Lu Guang

Cédric Alviani, the director of Reporters Without Borders’ East Asia bureau, called on China to disclose where Lu is and to “guarantee journalists’ freedom of movement and security, including in Xinjiang Province.” It has not answered yet.

(Source: Bored Panda)

'Growing up, it felt like I was too gay to be black and too black to be gay'

What it's like coming out as a black man when people see it as a 'white thing'

“You’re disgusting.”

I still remember my mum saying that to me. I’d been in my bedroom, talking on the phone to men I’d met online, and some of those chats were pretty sexual. But I was 23 and still living at home, and I had no idea my mum had been listening through the door. I remember feeling so scared in that moment. I realised that I would have to finally tell her the truth - I was gay.

Despite knowing I was gay from the age of 14, it took me almost 10 years to come out. Keeping that part of me secret for so long made me feel so alone. I felt like I was different from everyone else.

My first crush was on someone in my year at the all-boys Catholic school I went to. I first noticed him in the corridor between lessons, where he was mucking about with a group of friends, making them laugh. I liked him straight away. He was tall, mixed-heritage, athletic, and the class joker. He was always happy to talk to me, but never in a romantic way. I don’t think he ever knew how I felt about him. I never told him, of course. I could barely admit it to myself.

My family are originally from Sierra Leone, and I was born and raised in East London. I'm 28 now, and growing up, I didn’t know anyone who was gay, nor were there any black gay role models on TV or in the media. It was like we didn’t exist.

For some West African parents, someone coming out means that they've chosen to imitate white westerners, giving up on what they see as traditional African values. This may partly explain why, according to the ONS, only 0.9% of the UK’s black population describe themselves as openly gay, compared to 2% of the total UK population.

My first crush

So until I was in my early twenties, I buried my feelings and tried my best to pretend to be straight. I went through a period as a teen of praying every night, begging God to make me straight so I would fit in. When my friends used to say things like “that’s so gay” - meaning something was uncool - I’d join in so I wouldn't stand out.

But by the time I turned 21, I couldn’t suppress my sexuality anymore. I knew pretty much nothing about the gay community, and was eager to learn. So I created a Twitter profile using a fake name and used it to chat to guys online.

It felt like I was living a double life. It was upsetting, but also exhilarating. I started messaging a man and, before long, we were seeing each other. I had my first sexual experience with him and I felt so free when we were together. I would sneak out to meet him on the weekend, and for a brief while I felt totally happy. Then I would come home and stay silent about where I’d been, trying to avoid my mum’s gaze.

After a few months things with that guy fizzled out, but something inside me was different after sleeping with him. My confidence had grown, and I started messaging a few different men. Before long these messages became phone calls, and several of those phone calls got pretty explicit.

I decided that the time was right to tell my sister, who I’ve always been really close to. My sister has a couple of gay friends, so I thought she would be understanding - and I was right.

I was planning to move out of home, as I thought it would be easier to come out to mum once we weren’t living under the same roof. I wanted her to have space to process the news and, to be honest, I wanted to avoid any uncomfortable situations if she didn’t take it well.

But then came mum overhearing the phone calls. By the time this happened I was well on my way to saving enough money to move out. I still have no idea how much she’d heard - but it was clearly enough. She told my nan she’d been listening, who then told me. And then I knew it couldn't wait any longer, I’d have to tell her the truth.

My mum didn't accept my sexuality

Her response devastated me. She asked me to “change my lifestyle” - whatever that means. I thought, ‘being gay isn’t something I do, it’s who I am’. Why couldn’t she just accept me for who I am, even though it was something she wasn't used to?

I remember looking at her, with tears streaming down my face, as she told me I was “disgusting”. Though my mum and I were never that close, part of me hoped my coming out might bring down some of the walls between us. But the opposite happened - there were more barriers between us than ever before.

We continued to live in the same house for several uncomfortable months. Mum acted like I had never told her I was gay. We barely spoke, except to make polite chit-chat. I knew I had to leave.

Luckily, one of the guys I’d met online was also gay and knew what I was going through. He mentioned there was a spare room in the student house he was about to move into - and I jumped at the chance to take it. I ended up living with four students, three of whom were also gay. For the first time, I felt like people really understood me.

But feeling accepted as a black man in the wider gay community was a different matter for me. Black, gay men are underrepresented in the mainstream, and the impact of that is huge. One 2017 survey found that 71% of black men said they didn’t feel represented or visible in media and health campaigns aimed at LGBTQ+ people.

I’ve felt that, too. There are plenty of other gay, black men in my area - I know that because of how much a dating app I use lights up on any given night - but when I’m out with friends in a club it feels like we’re the only black, gay guys in there and we get a lot of unwelcome attention. It makes me feel really objectified. I can’t tell you how many times non-black men have told me how they’ve “always wanted to have sex with a black guy”. Not only is it racist, but it makes me feel like a piece of meat.

Today, the friends I met online have become like a family to me. I also campaign to raise awareness of sexual health among BAME gay men - who are more likely to be diagnosed with HIV in the UK than other groups.

Phil Samba's sexual health campaign, showing the love between two black men

For the campaign, I made posters of me and another black man - a model - posing as a couple in love, urging men like us to get tested and treated. The response was overwhelmingly positive. Even now, I still get messages on social media from young, black men telling me it helped persuade them go and get tested for STIs.

But there’s still so much narrow-mindedness to break through. People have told me I “don’t look gay”. But what does “gay” look like? When I ask them, they rarely have an answer for me - but I know what they mean. I’m not a stereotypically “camp” white guy, so I can’t possibly be gay, right? That’s why I want to use my voice to challenge these misconceptions.

As for my mum, we still don’t speak. She accepts that she called me disgusting, and that she was shocked when I told her - but apparently she says that, with time, she's become OK with my sexuality. In any case, I’m comfortable with who I am now - and that’s the most important thing.

(Source: BBC)

In this Calcutta Cafe, HIV positive adults deliver a strongish brew

Calcutta’s Cafe Positive operates out of a garage and is owned and managed by a group of young adults who are HIV posi­tive.

In a rain-splattered afternoon in Calcutta, three women, childhood friends now in their late forties, dec­ide to meet for coffee. “But instead of the cafes where we usually catch up, we decided to drop in at this new joint everyone is talking about,” says Chandrima Chanda, a teacher, who tra­velled nearly 40 km from the north of the city to get to leafy and busy Jodhpur Park in south Calcutta, where on July 15 a new coffee shop unveiled its very special charms to the public.

Called Cafe Positive, the joint operates out of a garage, concaving its way into a 10-ft by 12-ft space in the wall. But the word ‘positive’ here takes on much more meaning than casual optimism. The new cafe is owned and managed by a group of young adults who are HIV posi­tive. Diag­nosed when they were children, they grew up in a shelter for the HIV-infected. Some were abandoned by families; others were orphaned and rendered homeless.

The brain behind the initiative is Kallol Ghosh, founder of OFFER (Organisation of Friends for Energies and Resources), a non-profit NGO which runs the shelter for the HIV positive children, called  Ananda Ghar. It was started in 2000, 14 years after Ghosh founded OFFER. “We had ope­ned homes for orp­hans and homeless children, as well as one for those suffering from mental disabilities,” Ghosh says. “During our work we stumbled upon many HIV positive children. Mostly, they were born with it, having contracted it from either or both parents. Often they were the chil­dren of sex workers or beggars and were also orph­aned and homeless. They would land up in a children’s home or be left to fend for the­mselves on the streets. We realised HIV positive children needed special att­ent­ion, including medical care, like access to the drug Anti-retroviral, wit­­hout which their chances of survival would be slim.”

Among the first batch at Ananda Ghar was a brother-sister duo whose mother had committed suicide after neighbours ostracised her in the village. “She was a milkmaid. After her husband left her, she was bringing up her children by supplying milk to households,” says an OFFER member, recounting the tragedy that forced the boy and girl—the oldest not even eight—to end up in a shelter. If it took a long time for the traumatised chi­ldren to exorcise past memory, Ana­NDA Ghar wanted to ensure that their present—the dire fact that they were HIV-infected—would not tarnish their future.

Situated in the suburbs, where lush greenery crouches over abundant water bodies, the shelter has largely protected the children from the social stigma that hounds HIV positive people. “Here, they are not just surrounded by others like them, but they are taught not to be ashamed of their disease,” Ghosh says emphatically. “We keep telling them the only illness that they have is a weak immune system.” When a young girl at the home says, “I was brought to the home because I was diagnosed with AIDS,” she is promptly corre­cted by an OFFER offic­­ial, his tone hardening in a mild reprimand. “Never say that again,” he says. “There is a difference bet­­ween having AIDS and being HIV posi­­tive.”

The 75 children are sent to four different gov­­­­ernment schools, where they can choose from a wide range of extra-­curricular activities, including dance, music, art and sports.

However, the most important part, says Ghosh, is to make them feel loved. Exp­laining the need to instil “a sense of sec­urity” in the children, Ghosh reco­unts the story of a girl who was brought to the home when she was eight, after being abandoned by a well-to-do Calc­utta couple who had adopted her without the knowledge that she was HIV positive. “Eventually, they left the little girl on the streets.” After living a life of affluence for three-and-a-half years, she was in utter shock. For the first six months in Ananda Ghar, she didn’t utter a single word, says Ghosh. “It took tender, loving care for her to open up. Her first words to me were, ‘Uncle, you will not chuck me out on the road, will you?’” says an emotional Ghosh.

During Outlook’s visit to the home, the newest entrant, a three-year-old girl, is picked up and hugged by a warden as she looks around with lost, dazed eyes. Aba­ndoned by her family for being HIV positive, the child, say the older girls, cried ceaselessly at first, but has now settled in.

“We all cry at first because we miss our families,” says an older girl, who was eight when her HIV positive mother deposited her for ‘safe-kee­p­ing’. She is lucky; unlike many of the abandoned or orp­haned, her mother and grandmother regularly visit her. “But this shelter became our home and the girls, boys and staff our family. We love it here.” A boy who had arrived at Ananda Ghar also aged eight, and who is also a Cafe Positive emplo­yee like her, tea­­singly calls out, “You didn’t cry at all”. “Of course I did,” she retorts. “I wept sile­ntly.” She is comfortable at the cafe, too. “Initially, I was unsure, but now I like the interactions with customers.”

But care is one thing, the wherewithal to face the world outside is another. As the chil­d­­ren grew older, Ghosh worried about their leaving this cloister and being unprepared to deal with prejudices they would undoubtedly face. “We couldn’t leave them in the lurch,” Ghosh says. “We had to make them financially independent.”

While the sceptre of inadequate funds constantly stalks OFFER—it subsists on donations—Ghosh and other members decided to utilise their limited reso­u­rces to train the ten 18-year-olds. “The Japanese government had donated a bakery to a she­lter run by OFFER,” rev­eals Ghosh. It includes an oven for baking cakes and muffins, machinery for making sandwiches, the technology for brewing coffee and other beverages, including tea, cold shakes and mojitos.

“The month-long training, with a couple of weeks of int­ernships at other cafes, was provided to the boys and girls, over and above other career counselling,” says Ghosh. For many, the cafe job is an opening, a toehold in professional life. “I think I will make a good salesperson and working in Cafe Pos­itive is giving me valuable experience,” a girl says with a wide smile.

The boys and girls work in six-hour shifts and travel the 21-kilometre dista­nce from the home to the Jodhpur Park cafe by bus. “The idea is to instil confidence in them,” says Ghosh. So, not only do they travel to work on their own, they do the whole show: don apr­ons and t-shirts with the Cafe Positive logo, take orders from customers, pre­pare dishes, serve them up, keep tabs of the bills, collect cash, check accounts and manage the cafe. One of the boys speaks of how initially he was inhibited and wasn’t sure of how to speak with customers. “Not that we were not nervous, but we have been taught to pro­udly dec­lare that we have this condition and not hesitate to speak about it. When that fear is gone, it doesn’t matter what people will think,” he says.

Though getting someone to rent out a space for a cafe to be manned by people infected with HIV was, expectedly, a harrowing experience—ultimately, a gen­t­le­man cal­led Indrajyoti Dasgupta vaca­­ted his garage for the “noble venture”—the response was over­­whelming. As word spread, Cafe Positive stood out amongst the hundreds of eating out opt­ions that vie for attention in posh South Calcutta.

“Some days it’s so packed that customers wait for tables outside on the road,” gushes Ghosh. Word-of-mouth knowledge about the cafe has spread through soc­ial media. “The cafe is more than an avenue to generate inc­ome for HIV positive children,” he says. “This is the start of a movement which will not just eradicate stigma, but also bust myths about HIV, such as the grossly erroneous belief that the virus can get transmitted through food or drink. We want HIV positive people in every Bengal district to open a Cafe Positive, through which the true facts of HIV will be disseminated.”

The three childhood friends too had read about the cafe on the opinionated walls of Facebook. Says Ashmita Trivedi, a homemaker:  “I live in Jodhpur Park, which is a Bengali, upper-middle-class, conservative neighbourhood. But people seem to have the maturity to welcome the cafe.” Many more people must have felt like Ashmita. For there is always a crowd in front of Cafe Positive, painted as it is in the radiantly hopeful colours of the sun, in bright yellow and red.

(Source: Outlook)