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Children with AIDS being segregated in schools
By Jay Shankar
July 27, 2004
After fighting villagers and government officials for a year, 31-year-old T.K.
Rema says she has won her battle to gain school admission for her
HIV/AIDS-infected children, but she has not won the war yet.
Parents of more than 400 children in this southern village of Kottiyoor, in
Kerala, threatened to pull their children from the school if Rema's daughter
and son were admitted to a government-funded school.
The 31-year-old frail widow, who is shunned by neighbours and relatives because
she, too is living with HIV/AIDS, stood her ground and fought both the stigma
from the villagers and government inaction to protect what she said was 'a
basic human right'. |Discuss: Schools that shun and isolate children with AIDS
must be shut down. |
School authorities said the government had issued orders for appointment of a
teacher to report on Wednesday to teach the children, who will be segregated
from classmates and taught in a separate classroom.
"I want to accept this offer. I do not want to confront the society at this
point of time," Rema told AFP. "At a later stage I will renew my fight for
total inclusion."
A fortnight ago, when Rema took her six-year-old son S. Ananthakrishnan and
nine-year-old daughter R. Akshara to the school run by a Hindu social reformist
group, parents of other children prevented them from entering the school. "For
the first time in my life I saw beastly humans. How can the people who see us
and talk to us everyday do this to us? How can they be so cruel to another
human being?" Rema asked.
To put pressure on the government and to prevent the siblings living with
HIV/AIDS from being admitted to the school, parents took to the streets along
with their children to stage a protest rally a week ago. "I decided not to take
things lying down. I went and met the chief minister who said my kids will not
face any problem. And now I am informed that they will be allowed to attend the
classes from Wednesday."
A year ago at a government-run kindergarten school, Ananthakrishnan faced
seclusion when all the other children walked out. Akshara, meanwhile, lost a
school year once the children's HIV status became public when their father died
of AIDS in 2003.
The school authorities blamed the government for 'hyping up' the infection and
'creating a fear psychosis' and said health officials could not provide answers
to questions asked by parents during an interaction meant to solve the crisis.
"The government has failed to dispel fears of the deadly disease," said school
manager P.C. Ramakrishnan. "Most of the doctors in the state refuse to treat
AIDS patients and officials are not clear with their answers."
Many parents, who are farmers or agricultural labourers, said they were
ignorant of how AIDS spread and would not like their children to become
'sacrificial lambs' to prove a point about non-discrimination.
"First they (government) came out with advertisements portraying AIDS as a
demon who will devour anyone who came in contact with body fluids of the
infected," said parent P.K Jayarajan, whose child is studying in the same
school. "Now they say you can touch and be friendly with an HIV-positive
person. There is a contradiction," he said.
"To be honest I do not know how the disease spreads," said Jayarajan. "Some
doctors say once the patient dies the virus is alive for three hours, others
say it is three minutes. Some (health) officials earlier said HIV can spread
through saliva and sweat. Now, they say it needs blood-to-blood contact. So, we
parents decided not to take a risk. Our kids are not guinea pigs," Jayarajan
said.
India, with five million of its one billion-plus population living with
HIV/AIDS, is second only to South Africa as far as the number of people living
with HIV/AIDS is concerned.
Zama Coursen-Neff, senior researcher with Human Rights Watch, said India needed
to urgently enact legislation to curb discrimination against children living
with HIV/AIDS. "Under UN guidelines, children must have education with other
children and not be segregated. The Indian government should have a plan to
take care of children orphaned by AIDS. Right now, it is not on their radar
screen," she said.
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on precipice of disaster
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