MINT LOUNGE | SANGRAM (Meena Seshu)

Meena Seshu, general secretary of Sangram, is part of the first clutch of activists who responded ​to the AIDS epidemic that hit India towards the late 1980s, early 1990s. Through her, Sangram began to work with sex workers in Sangli, Maharashtra. Many of the women were already well-acquainted with the virus, having seen others return from Mumbai's red-light district to die in their native villages. But it was only when the first case of HIV emerged from Sangli district- the patient was not a sex worker, but a pregnant woman who received infected blood during a surgery- that doctors began to take notice of the danger that rural India faced. Seshu, now 52, recounts the early days of the virus epidemic and working with sex workers, whom she says, taught her a lot about humanity.