According to official data now made available, more than 10,000 HIV-positive
women have given birth by February this year, and more than 20 percent of them
have abandoned their babies. Most doctors and officials believe that the HIV
incidence is far higher than officially recognised.
A Human Rights Watch report says children are often segregated for no medical
reasons. This may be necessary "not because these children are dangerous for
society, but (because) we are dangerous for them. Keeping them all together is
one way of protecting them from society."
The culture of fear surrounding HIV/AIDS has also led to virtual isolation of
the affected women. Many choose to hide their diagnosis from co-workers,
friends and family rather than face the consequences.
"Russian law protects all HIV-positive people from discrimination, but the
government has turned a blind eye to the very real discrimination these women
and their children face," Lois Whitman, children's rights director at Human
Rights Watch told IPS. "The stigma of HIV/AIDS is with them everywhere: in the
workplace, at school, at the neighbourhood clinic, even in their own homes."
Many HIV-positive women have reported being verbally abused by doctors and
nurses, or even being denied treatment.
Their children are born into a life where they will face discrimination from
day one. The majority of children born to HIV-positive mothers remain with
their families. But their parents soon find that the children are not welcome
at school.
Children who are abandoned are usually placed in specialised orphanages for
HIV-positive children, or isolated in hospital wards.
State duma (parliament) deputy and chair of the women, children and family
affairs committee Ekaterina Lakhova says many Russians who believe they are not
biased often unconsciously are.
"While we as politicians and rights activists have made considerable progress
in fighting for integration and welfare of our women and children, there are
still people who continue to divide society. The situation might get much worse
than we thought it would," she told IPS.
"It's madness when these people are fired from their jobs, or have their rental
agreements torn up, and receive inadequate care when it is revealed they have
HIV/AIDS," she said. "Breaches of confidentiality can and do unravel people's
lives, forcing them to find new jobs, new schools and new homes."
Regional director at the Aids Foundation East-West (AFEW) Julie Dixon said
pregnant women and mothers tested positive for HIV could become a serious
social problem if the government did not act now.
"Discrimination usually discourages them from seeking proper information on how
best to deal with the disease, find support from others in similar situations,
and receive medical attention and care," she told IPS. "Additionally,
discrimination forces them underground when they should demand equal treatment
and acceptance by the general population, and this can seriously and negatively
affect the child's development both socially and psychologically."
Underlying these attitudes could be a resistance to things foreign. Russians
think the virus did not originate in their country, and therefore anyone who
contracts it becomes an outcast, says Transatlantic Partners Against AIDS
(TPAA) programmes director Alec Khachatrian.
"It's only now that Russia has publicly recognised that the disease exists in
society after several years silence on the part of government authorities,"
Khachatrian told IPS. "Russia can only win its struggle against child
abandonment if it gives priority to fighting the disease by public education
and giving adequate financial support as well as necessary material
assistance."
Khachatrian said the state would be doing irreversible damage to HIV sufferers
if it allows them to be discriminated against. "These women have equal rights
as state citizens and must necessarily be given access to everything within the
stipulated laws of the country. They are not criminals to be isolated."
Khachatrian opposed abortions as a solution. HIV-positive women need to be
welcome, and have their privacy guarded, he said. Ways of integrating them into
society need to be worked out, he said.
Ignorance about the virus - even in the medical community - is one of the
biggest problems affecting people living with HIV/AIDS, Khachatrian said. "In a
society as large as Russia this is a difficult task and very challenging, but
starting from the medical community where these women make the first contact
could be a step in the right direction."
Inter Press Service
