Fuzzy and Neutrosophic Analysis of Women with HIV/AIDS. With Specific Reference to Rural Tamil Nadu in India

Neutrosophic models are used in the analysis of the socio-economic problems of HIV/AIDS infected women patients living in rural Tamil Nadu. Most of these women are uneducated and live in utter poverty. Till they became seriously ill they worked as daily wagers. When these women got admitted in the hospital they were either terminally ill or the disease has advanced to a chronic stage. We mainly choose this group because they are the most neglected in our male dominated society. The first chapter gives a brief introduction about HIV/AIDS among rural women in Tamil Nadu. Chapter 2 is an analysis of the situation using fuzzy theory in general and Fuzzy Relational Maps (FRM) in particular. The FRM tool is specially chosen for two reasons: It can give the hidden pattern of the dynamical system and as the socio-economic condition of women infected with HIV/AIDS is interdependent we choose this special fuzzy tool called FRM. In Chapter 3, we use Fuzzy Associative Memories (FAM) to analyze the problem because FAM is the only fuzzy tool that can give the gradations of each of the nodes/concepts. In Chapter 4 for the first time we use neutrosophic theory in general and neutrosophic relational maps (NRM) in particular to analyze this problem. Interested readers can compare and analyze the two models FRM and NRM. This chapter introduces the notion of Neutrosophic Associative Memories (NAMs) that is an analogous model of Fuzzy Associative Memories. NAMs are applied to this problem and conclusions are based on this analysis. The sixth chapter gives the translated version of the verbatim interviews of the 101 HIV/AIDS infected, rural, uneducated, and poor women of Tamil Nadu. It is important to record that most of these women talked very openly and that in spite of their sufferings and problems they did not suffer depression