Socio-Economic Impact of HIV and AIDS in Tamil nadu

Table 4.9
The situation with respect to provision of care to PLWHA
PLWHA who need care 123
Number of caregivers 128
Number of caregivers who are currently employed 74
Number of caregivers who gave up their job in order to provide care 0
self employed or salaried. The caregivers
are likely to face the problem of time
poverty in HIV households as they try
to cope with the burden of providing
care to the PLWHA as well as meeting
their commitments at their workplace.
This problem is going to become more
serious and visible in the coming years
as the number of persons suffering
from AIDS rises and hospital facilities
are put under greater strain due to such
patients.
4.4 Loss of income of
PLWHA and the caregiver
There are two possible ways in which
HIV households may lose income: (a)
the PLWHA may be currently working
but may have to take leave/be absent
from work due to ill health; and, (b) the
PLWHA may drop out of labour force
as her/his physical condition worsens.
While these two possible channels of
impact have been highlighted in the
Table 4.10
Occupational distribution of caregiver
Occupational category
Employment pattern of caregiver
Rural Urban Total
Cultivation 0 0 0
Agriculture wage labour 20 5 25
Non-agricultural wage 11 9 20
Self-employed non-agriculture 8 2 10
Salaried 3 6 9
Others 9 1 10
Total 51 23 74
existing literature on HIV and AIDS, this
is not all. The caregiver too may suffer
a similar loss of income. The reason is
likely to be leave/absence from work
to look after the PLWHA and, as the
condition of PLWHA member worsens,
a complete withdrawal from labour force
to provide full attention to the latter. In
this section all these possible channels
of impact are explored on the basis of
the sample. It is difficult to project this
at the level of the state since the sample
is not proportionate to population and
hence, weights cannot be assigned to the
household/person.
As noted above, 363 persons reported
being currently employed among the
475 persons in the age group of 18-60
years who were interviewed in detail.
Within this group, 164 i.e. around 45
percent (Table 4.11) declared that they
had suffered loss of income in some
form. This is clearly a large percentage.
While this may not reflect the true
population parameter, given the large
sampling errors that are possible, it
does indicate that a large percentage
of HIV households suffer from loss of
income. It is seen from the table that
the income lost is 10.53 percent of the
current household income. The income
loss in the sample is higher for the rural
households (14.46%) in comparison with
urban households (7.97%). However, it is
difficult to project this figure to predict
the impact at the level of the state. Even
to get a crude measure of the impact, the
share of the income of HIV households in
40 Socio-Economic Impact of HIV and AIDS in Tamil Nadu, India