World Aids Day: Play staged to create awareness

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan National Council of the Arts in collaboration with Pakistan Red Crescent Society staged the play “Kiran” on Wednesday to mark International AIDS Day.

The play deals with the life of an HIV positive man and the effects of AIDS on his family.

Troubled by hateful attitude of the people around him, the protagonist takes shelter in a graveyard. The only highlight of his day: the sole daily visit from his wife.

The people living nearby, police and the visitors to the graveyard look at him suspiciously.

After hearing the conversations of people visiting the graveyard, a kind-hearted doctor takes the patient for counselling and treatment to hospital.

The plot serves as a message of awareness to people to treat people suffering from AIDS with care and respect and not to treat them as outcasts or pariahs. The play also portrayed the causes of infection and ways to prevent or control it.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 20^th, 2011.