|
|
"I always tell the doctor that I am HIV positive. I know that he should use protection when he sees a patient anyway, but I have always felt that it is my duty to inform him".
However, this behaviour has brought mental suffering to Mihai more than once.
"There are doctors who ask you politely to leave when they hear you have got HIV. They refuse to see you although you are sick. I guess they are too terrified they might catch the disease".
Mihai adds that such an attitude does nothing but deeply hurt the patient. "It seems like it is not enough that you feel like you are a burden for the near and dear ones most of the time. You are rejected by the people who are supposed to help you, too".
"The general trend is the refuse of adequate health care for those infected. Many doctors, except maybe in the ER, just won't see the HIV positive", Claudia Catana, information officer with the Romanian Angel Appeal (RAA) foundation, agrees.
The causes for this peculiar situation are sometimes justified with the lack of protection materials. However, Catana says, most of the time people are refused treatment because of "a mentally barrier, mostly generated by insufficient information on the HIV infection".
In order to help the HIV infected children, RAA has set up a network of 80 medical practitioners.
The persons in charge of the project say that, at first, it hadn't been easy to convince the doctors to come and work for them but, finally, the idea proved to be a success both among patients and medical practitioners. If, at the beginning, the doctors would see the sick people only in the spaces provided by RAA, now many of them take care of positive patients in their own offices.
Ioana Baciu is one of the dentists who have been seeing children with HIV for the past two years. "After such an experience, you definitely change, you become a different person... more humble in front of your destiny, but fiercer against human ignorance", she confesses.
At 17, Sorina knows very well what "human ignorance" means as she has had to face the hardships of life more than the ordinary teenagers around her age, after she has found out that her mother is HIV positive.
"Not even to this day, people can't understand what serious effects HIV and AIDS may have on their life. Unfortunately, you come to truly realise what this menace is all about and that you can get the disease only when someone very dear to you gets sick all of a sudden", Sorina says. "We absolutely have to learn more about the virus and, for this we need the media, the teachers and the doctors".
Humiliation at School
Another form of social exclusion is the discrimination which sometimes takes the form of humiliation, which sick kids face at school.
The Romanian media often reports on cases of children kicked out of kindergarten or school after the teachers have found out that the kids are HIV infected. At other times, pupils are allowed to study at a certain school, but they deeply suffer from humiliation from both teachers and colleagues.
Mihai says that his colleagues at school know him only as a boy who gets sick more often than the others, but that's all, they have no idea he has got HIV. "If they knew, it would be a tragedy for me. No one will probably treat me normally again".
He says that it is easy for him to hide he is infected because he is living in a big city. "The people with HIV who are living in rural areas for example, are more vulnerable. Everyone knows everyone else there and the chance of keeping their secret is very remote".
However, not being able to tell the people around him what is in his mind has proven to be an ordeal for Mihai.
"You long for someone your age to talk about your disease with, to bring your fears into the light. There is no one there for me".
Andreea, 10, says that she doesn't have anything against the infected kids. "When the new school year started, I was happy to see we had new colleagues. But my parents told me not to touch them or talk to them, or I might get sick too", she told the Romanian media.
A similar case is Maria's, a Romanian girl of 15, who has been living with HIV for several years now.
"When talking about the virus, people say all sorts of nonsense, like "
"I can't even interfere in a discussion about HIV or AIDS with my friends. Especially when someone says things like . I hate it and it makes me feel very sad", she complains.
These children experience what psychologist Aurora Liiceanu calls "a secondary psychological trauma".
"Besides the fact that the disease brings along not only physical, but also mental suffering, the hostility of the community leads to deeper negative feelings for patients, such as depression. The infected children see no helping hand, what they experience from the people around them is only rejection", Liiceanu says.
Under such circumstances, sometimes the parents would seek help at national or international human rights organisations. In the past few months, they have started bringing to justice the persons accused of discrimination.
|
Tags
You must be logged in to add tags.
|
Writer Profile
Daniela Tuchel
This user has not written anything in his panorama profile yet.
|
Comments
You must be a TakingITGlobal member to post a comment. Sign up for free or login.
|
|
