The Hindu : New Delhi News : HIV/AIDS children face discrimination at schools and family events

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Aug 02, 2007
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New Delhi

New Delhi

HIV/AIDS children face discrimination at schools and family events

Aarti Dhar

Exclusion, sometimes self-imposed, to avoid mistreatment
Poverty unquestionably linked to HIV/AIDS

NEW DELHI: Shunned, teased, shouted and ignored in their homes and neighbourhoods, the children affected by HIV/AIDS and their caregivers often face exclusion from family events, ceremonies, festivals and marriages.

According to a study, ‘Barriers to services for children with HIV positive parents in five high HIV prevalence states in India’, the affected children were made to sit separately in schools, got less attention than their classmates, and their parents’ illness was used to humiliate them.

Their classmates were told by their parents not to keep any contact with them, and some schools bowed to public pressure and refused admission to such children.

Study conducted

The study has been conducted by United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in association with National Aids Control Organisation (NACO) and the Ministry of Women and Child Development in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Manipur, Nagaland and Tamil Nadu, where HIV-prevalence is more than one per cent.

Affected children in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu referred to the impoverishment of their families due to HIV/AIDS, in the context of where they lived and how they were raised. .

Even for a routine (non-HIV) medical treatment, if affected children went to a healthcare centre, they were made to sit separately, wait until last, have nurses refuse to dress wounds or give injections, be placed in a corridor rather than a ward, referred to another centre, or simply turned away.

When asked about exclusion from other services, children in Nagaland reported discrimination by anganwadi workers in giving food, while in Maharashtra, the subsidised food grains did not reach them at all.

Fear of disease

Exclusion, sometimes, is also self-imposed by affected children or their caregivers to avoid mistreatment and further stigmatisation.

Both affected children and caregivers said the reason for their exclusion was other people’s fear of contracting the disease, arising from a common belief that children of HIV positive parents are affected and can transmit the virus through casual contact.

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