HIV Is Alive on Nepal and India’s Highways
On the highways linking Nepal and India, HIV moves as freely as the trucks but treatment doesn't.
HIV doesn’t stop at borders and neither should treatment and care. On the highways connecting Nepal and India, long-haul truck drivers and transgender sex workers cross paths every day. Many are already living with HIV. Many more are at high risk.
Our latest investigation follows their stories from border towns like Birgunj–Raxaul and Bhairahawa–Sunauli to trucking hubs in Delhi. Truckers spend weeks away from home, waiting at borders for cargo clearance. Transgender sex workers survive on the margins, facing violence and exclusion. Both groups often avoid HIV testing or stop treatment out of fear, stigma, or simply because the system makes it too hard.
Even though India and Nepal both offer free HIV treatment, crossing the border can mean losing access altogether. Nepali drivers working in India often can’t get medicine without local ID documents. Broken supply chains, missing records, and social stigma quietly fuel an epidemic that stays mostly invisible.
This is a story about the people who keep goods moving across South Asia and the health system that doesn’t move with them.
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