HIV-positive Lata (name changed), mother of two children, is educating the people about the ways to combat the deadly virus.

The 35-year-old woman from a village in Ganjam, the district which has highest number of HIV positive persons in the state, wants people to share her experience and the cause of the infection.

Her husband Banamali (name changed), also tested HIV positive, said that the most of the rural people lacked the basic knowledge about HIV /AIDS.

The couple narrates to this correspondent the discrimination and humiliation faced by them at their home in Khallikote block of Ganjam district.

"I was abused by some persons and my ration card was thrown away last month at a place near the village," the woman said.

"They abused me just because we were tested HIV positive...The villagers later tendered apology, but wanted to hold a meeting....At the meeting I will narrate my experience as well as try to educate people about how the virus of the deadly disease spread," she said.

Lata said she underwent the HIV test at the Voluntary Councelling and Testing Center (VCTC) here in 2006, after her husband tested HIV-positive.

Her husband, a textile mill worker, had been infected at his workplace, the woman said.

However, none of her children is HIV positive. The duo are not discriminated by their classmates fortunately, Lata said.

As an outreach worker and a peer counsellor for those affected by HIV, Lata is trying to propagate how "a number of young women in rural area fall victim to the virus due to ignorance and lack of access to information."

Although there was no definite information about the number of HIV positive women in Ganjam district, but the the number would in likelihood be over 2000, said Loknath Mishra, the director of Aruna, an NGO working in the field of AIDS prevention.

Official sources, however, put the number of total HIV positive persons in the district at 6090, while the total number was 15,194 for entire Orissa.