New Delhi: Global gay rights and AIDS activism got a fillip on Monday with French First Lady Carla Bruni making more than a fashion statement by meeting HIV positive mothers, children and activists.
Bruni also assured them that the issues concerning their rights and wellbeing would be raised by her at world fora including the European Commission.
Bruni, who reportedly lost her brother to HIV-related complications in 2006, is the ambassador for Geneva-based Global Fund that invests in fight against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
"I understand. Yes, I will," she told activists from the NAZ Foundation, an outfit fighting for HIV positive and Gay rights, who wanted her to raise with the European Commission (EC) their stand disallowing generic medicines from India to be exported to their nations for treating HIV positives.
NAZ Foundation's executive director Anjali Gopalan brought the issue to Bruni's notice and her concern over the EC stand was also voiced by Global Fund Executive Director Prof Michel Kazatchkine, who accompanied the French First Lady during the visits.
As part of her campaign for prevention of HIV/AIDS and promoting related programmes, she went around the capital's Safdarjung Hospital, which runs a programme for HIV positive pregnant women and appreciated the "courage" shown by the patients there in ensuring that their progenies are free of the debilitating virus.
"It is very courageous. She will have a healthy baby. She is very courageous to do that," Bruni told the hospital's doctors after interacting with a migrant labourer's wife from Uttarakhand, who was found to be HIV positive during her pre-natal tests.
The First Lady was taken around the wards, where the hospital provides services for preventing parent-to-child HIV transmission integrated with general patient care and maternal health, by National Aids Control Organisation (NACO) Joint Secretary Aradhana Johri and hospital medical superintendent Dr NK Mohanty.
The model-turned activist later told waiting reporters that the "prevention of transmission of AIDS is one of the most important fights that humanity has to face. I am taking care, in particular, the prevention of transmission from
mother to the child. Because, of course, AIDS does not concern the minority, but concerns everyone of us."
Referring to her interaction with the HIV positive pregnant women, she said, "They can come here and I think it is a great achievement that the doctors and the nurses are doing here."
"Because pregnant women can get tested here and often they accept the tests for their baby so they can be treated for being HIV positive and their baby will be born healthy."
On why it is important for her to take up this campaign, Bruni quipped, "Isn't it evident?"
But, she stressed that "it is important for babies to be born HIV-free." "Since we have the drugs that the Global Fund can bring to every country, my job is to talk about it and to say to every mother to go to the hospital, get tested and it is not a trauma, it is just a disease and it is not a malediction and your child will be healthy and you can take care of your family as well," she added.
At the NAZ Foundation, which had successfully contested the Section 377 of IPC in the Delhi High Court to get it declared illegal, Bruni took a good look at the facilities that the outfit was providing for 46 HIV positive children, who are inmates of the care home.
The First Lady was asked by one of the children at the care home what she thought of India. "I love India. This time, I am here for only four days. But next time, I will be here for four weeks," she said.
The children sang songs, both in English and Hindi, for her and presented her and Kazatchkine with paintings that they had made specially for the occasion.
"You all look very happy, healthy, loved and educated," Bruni told them.
Asked to sing a song from her coming album, the First Lady said, it will come out in 2012 and that she would sing for them the next time she was there at their care home.
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