SHILLONG, Dec 12: Barry Leslie Kharmalki of the Meghalaya State Network of Positive People set the tone for a World AIDS Day event on Friday by warning that inaction was claiming more lives than the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV.
He urged the community and institutional systems to confront what he described as a growing climate of complacency.
“We are not losing people to the virus; we are losing them to inaction,” he said at a programme held on the premises of the Bharat Scouts and Guides.
Kharmalki said the indicators emerging across the HIV landscape are no longer subtle concerns but “alarms” that point to dangerous slippages: rising loss to follow-up, increasing cases among pregnant women, more children living with HIV, a surge in new infections among young people, and expanding co-infections such as TB and Hepatitis due to late diagnosis and weak linkage to care.
He added that welfare access for people living with HIV has become “almost nil,” worsening the financial strain despite free treatment.
He reflected on how World AIDS Day, initiated in 1988 by WHO officials James W. Bunn and Thomas Netter, once resonated with urgency, unity, and public mobilisation.
“Today, the day often feels like a formality, overshadowed by silence in spaces where the loudest advocacy once came from the community itself,” he said.
Kharmalki stressed that the very success of ART (antiretroviral treatment), which turned HIV into a manageable condition, has contributed to a dangerous sense of comfort.
The transformation from terror to chronic care, he noted, has unintentionally opened the door to apathy among institutions and communities.
He also voiced concern over what he described as a weakening PLHIV movement, once the backbone of change. According to him, a united, assertive, and courageous collective has slowly given way to divisions and token participation, undermining the force that previously shaped policy, accountability, and public awareness.
Calling for a renewal of solidarity and purpose, Kharmalki urged the community to remember the battles fought and the victories earned, emphasising that progress must be protected with vigilance.
He said silence, resignation, and complacency risk rewriting the future of HIV in ways that would undo years of collective effort.
Kharmalki concluded by reminding participants that the strength of the movement lies in its willingness to remain vocal, compassionate, and unafraid of responsibility.
The task ahead, he said, is to “stay awake” and prevent the hard-won progress from slipping away.
