Contributor:
Sahil Choudhary
HERO Awards Recipient: Community Hero 2025
What is the HIV situation like in your country and region?
India continues to experience a concentrated HIV epidemic, with key populations particularly MSM, trans persons, sex workers, and people who inject drugs bearing a disproportionate burden. While treatment access has expanded significantly, progress is uneven across states.
In urban centres like Delhi, we’re seeing improvements in testing uptake, but plateaus in PrEP availability, significant gaps in mental health integration, and persistent barriers for queer and trans communities to access dignified, stigma‑free care. The lack of inclusive sexual health education, and ongoing policing and social violence, continues to deter many from approaching government facilities.
What does People First mean to you in your community?
For us, People First means centering rights, dignity and agency for everyone but especially communities who navigate layered vulnerabilities. It means not reducing people to risk categories, sexual behaviour, or HIV status, but seeing them as full humans with emotional, social, economic, and relational needs.
It is the principle we use across our programmes: from our counselling and community support events to crisis response, legal aid referrals, and drop‑in centre services. Whether someone walks in for HIV testing, for help navigating Grindr‑related violence, or for support during family rejection, People First means we respond with compassion, respect, and non‑judgment.
How does stigma and discrimination prevent access to HIV services in Fiji and the Pacific?
Stigma and discrimination continue to block queer and trans communities from accessing HIV services in several interconnected ways. Many still face misgendering, judgement, and breaches of confidentiality in healthcare settings, which makes clinical environments feel unsafe. Years of social stigma also create internalised shame, causing people to fear being recognised while seeking services. In addition, police harassment, family rejection, and other forms of violence often destabilise people’s lives, interrupting testing or treatment. Growing digital harms such as extortion, outing, and targeted abuse through dating apps also add further fear and mental‑health stress, pushing individuals away from formal services. Together, these factors make it difficult for people to access HIV care early, regularly, and without fear.
Within the current political and funding climate, what can still be done to ensure access to services for marginalised populations?
Even in the current political and funding climate, there is still meaningful work that can be done to protect access to HIV services for vulnerable and marginalised communities. Strengthening community‑led and identity‑affirming spaces remains essential, as centres like ours offer safe access to testing, counselling, and mental‑health support while helping people navigate government systems without fear. Integrating mental health into HIV programmes is equally important. At the same time, building coalitions across grassroots organisations, health institutions and legal networks ensures stronger advocacy and more responsive policies. Finally, continued documentation of lived experiences keeps emerging vulnerabilities visible to everyone.
UN80 and the proposal to sunset UNAIDS — how will that affect Fiji/the region?
The potential sunset of UNAIDS creates deep concern in our region, if not in my country particularly. UNAIDS absence has:
- weaken access to preventative measure to HIV like PEP and PrEP,
- reduce emphasis on key populations within national planning, and
- shrink funding flows to community-led organisations
In South Asia, where queer and trans rights remain contested politically, the loss of a global accountability partner risks undoing years of progress.
Anything else you want to add and highlight?
I’d like to highlight the urgent need for quality and holistic care in queer communities and within community-led organisations themselves. Sustaining HIV work requires investing not just in commodities and infrastructure, but in people. Our communities carry multiple burdens, yet continue to show extraordinary strength, innovation, and solidarity. Supporting this resilience is essential to any People First approach.
