INDIA: Health minister’s gaffe
The man with ultimate oversight over India’s fight against HIV has been accused of labelling homosexuality a foreign disease.
“This disease has come to India from foreign shores,” Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad told a press conference.
“One man has sex with another man which is completely unnatural and should not be happening but it is, even in our country. It is difficult to detect this because we don’t know who indulges in this and this is hampering our progress.
“In the case of female sex workers, we can identify the community and reach out to them since they live in clusters. But in case of MSM [men who have sex with men], it isn’t always possible.”
Following an outcry in the Indian HIV sector Azad now claims the disease he was referring to was HIV and not homosexuality.
In India MSM are estimated to make up 4.1 percent of the population but accounted for 7.3 percent of HIV infections in 2010.
A bill to protect the rights of people with HIV has been languishing in the Indian Parliament for the last five years. Azad recently refused to announce a timeline for its passage.
Sounds like a rant from the Catholic SDA Union to me. You know, the people who run Federal Labor and hold the numbers to decide if the Prime Minister stays in power, and take a baseball bat to Rainbow Labor, and all those in Labor who are trying to make the party about a fair go.