AIDS Activism in Pakistan: Diminishing Funds, Evasive State

This article draws on a year of ethnographic fieldwork in the HIV/AIDS sector of Pakistan at the moment of rolling back a World Bank-financed programme. Classified by UN agencies as at ‘high risk’ of a generalized HIV epidemic, Pakistan has an epidemiology driven by injecting drug use, and a Penal Code and Islamist legislation which criminalize non-therapeutic drug use and extra-marital sex. In recent years, a sharp increase in the numbers of registered HIV-positive people has necessitated a shift from HIV prevention among ‘high risk groups’ to the provision of care to those living with HIV/AIDS. The rolling back of external funding, which was further compounded by the effects of devolution on the Ministry of Health, created challenges for AIDS activism in Pakistan, as reflected in the everyday lives — and deaths — of the patient-activists and their community-based organizations. This article recounts the story of one such aspiring AIDS activist caught in multiple dilemmas emanating from these macro-processes. This story throws light on the limitations of the complex agency of actors in development, and shows how the shifting loci of power from the state to non-state entities in the global neoliberal order impacts the provision of vital services like HIV prevention and AIDS control.