More Soldiers Killed by AIDS Than Bullets in India's Northeast: General

On Friday, Indian defense officials said random blood tests of soldiers fighting insurgents in jungles in the nation's northeast found scores were HIV-infected. "The time has come to wake up with HIV infection among our troops assuming serious dimensions. Now we find more soldiers dying to HIV/AIDS than to bullets fired by militants," said Lieutenant General Bhopinder Singh, director general of Assam Rifles, a 50,000-strong paramilitary force battling about 30 guerilla insurgencies fighting for independence or greater autonomy.

Since the first HIV case detected in an Assam Rifles soldier in 1992, 32 soldiers have died of AIDS and 180 are now seriously ill with the disease at two treatment camps. And though the infections are in line with India's overall infection rate, soldiers in the region are still unaware how HIV spreads, experts said. "We find awareness levels about how HIV spreads very low among soldiers," said S.I. Ahmed, a Guwahati-based AIDS specialist.

On Friday, Assam Rifles held an AIDS awareness campaign in Shillong, and soldiers were provided with free condoms.

"In most cases we have found the soldiers mingling with the locals and then going for unprotected sex to fight stress and fatigue," said one Assam Rifles doctor. "Life away from families for a longer duration is one of the reasons," he said. "We're invariably stressed out and monotony sets in working in isolated and hostile terrain for a long period," said one recently diagnosed HIV-positive soldier. "So the easy way to relax is to go for casual sex. And I also did that without really knowing the consequences."

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