A “vast number of visitors” crashed Carla Bruni-Sarkozy’s website within minutes of its launch on Monday, but in the global excitement, what was missed in India is a beautiful connection made in it with a group of families in the coastal Andhra Pradesh city of Guntur.

Featured on www.carlabrunisarkozy.org, in an 8-minute photo essay, are stories of five families coping with the massive difficulties — and experiencing the small joys — of living with HIV in Guntur. The photo essay is part of the international anti-disease partnership Global Fund’s ‘Access to Life Campaign’, in which eight photographers from the celebrated photo cooperative Magnum have portrayed the lives of people in nine countries before and four months after they began antiretroviral (ARV) treatment.

The French First Lady is Global Fund’s Ambassador for Protection of Mothers and Children Against AIDS. The essays document the personal journeys of the patients and their families, and tracks the changes brought by their access to treatment. India and Vietnam are the two countries in Asia to be featured on the site. The Guntur essay, done by the 56-year-old American writer and photo chronicler Jim Goldberg, focuses on the Freedom Foundation’s Guntur facility.

“We are very happy that our work has received this platform (Bruni’s website),” said Sarah Ramya, Project Officer for the Andhra chapter of the Indian Network of Positive Persons (INP+), the civic society movement bringing together HIV+ people. “Our aim is to tell people that quality of life can be improved with access to drugs. The key message that needs to go out is that life can be prolonged. We need to bring as many people as we can under the local health facilities by improving access to ARV drugs.”

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