Trans woman rides to fight HIV spread & stigma in Pakistan

Casually clad in a blue paramedic suit, 44-year-old transgender woman Kiran Danish, an outreach worker in HIV control program, sits cross-legged by a chai stall near Dr Ruth Pfau Hospital, and radiates confidence as she sips from her cuppa and says, “The country will have overcome HIV spread by 2030 in the face of all the challenges, both organic and man-made.”

Since 2009, Danish has been riding on her 70cc motorcycle to the length & breadth of Karachi to help,  in various ways, the HIV patients from her trans community, who suffer not only the infection fallout but also the unwarranted societal wrath, which begins when they are born and is unimaginably compunded when they engage for survival in activities considered taboo, despite their prevalence, and contract infections, such as HIV.

“Oh even you people fall sick?” Is among the most common and most euphemized slurs we face as people from gender binary try to dehumanize us in every which way, says Danish while she finished her chai.

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Listen to her story and her ambitions as she speaks in an exclusive report with ARY Stories.

 

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