Sunita Satpal, 32, does not request anonymity while discussing her HIV+ status.

Sunita Satpal, 32, does not request anonymity while discussing her HIV+ status.

She was diagnosed with the HIV+ virus about seven years ago and now feels that coming out in the open can help reduce the stigma faced by HIV + patients. She will be running in the Mumbai Marathon along with 19 other HIV+ people to espouse the cause of insurance for HIV+ patients.

A district co-ordinator of Maharashtra Network of Positive people (NPM), Satpal said, “I got HIV because I was not aware of how the infection spreads. It doesn’t matter how I got the infection. The only thing that matters is that it’s not my fault,” said Satpal.

“Our aim is to tell the world that positive people are normal and can participate in a race. The patients who will run the Marathon have signed consent forms with us,” said Bhakti Arora, manager, corporate partnerships, PSI.

Satpal added that the major stigma against HIV+ patients is that people assume it has been acquired through sexual contact.

“People do not realise that HIV can be acquired via blood transfusion and from the mother during pregnancy,” she said, adding, “And besides, even if the virus is acquired through sex, so what? Like we need food to satisfy hunger, we also need sex to satisfy sexual appetite.”

In Maharashtra, about 900 HIV+ patients have enrolled under the group policy involving Star insurance initiated by the Maharashtra Network of Positive People (NPM+).

The project ‘Connect’, designed to build public private partnerships in combating HIV, will be partly funded by the NGO, Population Services International (PSI).

When an insured person gets admitted in a Network hospital, he/she can go in for cashless hospitalisation.