Kerala: Children affected by HIV/AIDS find caring refuge

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AIDS-hit kids find a caring refuge in Kerala's Thrissur District:-

Kochi August 29, 2005 10:28:12 AM IST

India's socio-economic status, traditional social ills, cultural

myths on sex and sexuality and a huge population of marginalised

people make it extremely vulnerable to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, as a

UNICEF report says.

But the children who don't know even how to care themselves in very

favourable conditions, if let abandoned with this deadly disease by

their near and dear ones, what can be worse than it for them.

In most of the cases even orphanages, suspicious of the antecedents

of an abandoned child, refused to keep them.

However, few of the kids in Kerala are lucky enough to have found a

home at a tiny care centre named 'Mar Kundukulam Memorial Research

and Rehabilitation Center in Thrissur, which has defied the bitter

social stigma to adopt children with HIV/AIDS.

According to the caretakers there, most of the children in this care

centre were picked up after frantic calls from hospitals where

relatives, often registered under false addresses, simply

disappeared after ailing parents died or left the babies with hired

nannies.

Though the Center has adopted as many as it can have, the number,

officials say, is growing alarmingly and fear the small facility

will not be able to cater for all.

" Everyday the number of children is increasing. Often the HIV

positive children, after their parents die are abandoned or left at

hospitals. So we go to all such places and bring the children here

and try and take care of them, " said Varghese Palathingal, a priest

who runs the center with help from some nuns.

The center, which was initiated last year with two children only,

now have more than 20 children. The trend, Palathingal says,

reflects only tip of the iceberg. Though no accurate data is

available on children, some reports calculate as many as 1.2 million

children under age fifteen all over the country have lost one or

both parents to AIDS and are in all probability under extreme

psychological and physical trauma.

With five million-plus HIV/AIDS patients, India as whole is itself

rivalling the world's AIDS capital, South Africa.

Government is fighting on with massive efforts, but it is still too

less or too late for millions of impoverished Indians, mostly in

rural areas, who either have little clue about the disease or are

hiding it from others for fear of being ostracized.

Many shy away from government hospitals, where reporting new

infections is compulsory and fall prey to blackmail at private

clinics, which fake results for pittance. More over country s poor

health system and rampant diseases mean many with HIV/AIDS die of

other causes without them, or anyone else, ever knowing they are

infected.

World bodies have called for educating people and setting small

village scale units to help AIDS people and voluntary organisations,

like the one run by Palathingal, are chipping in wherever they can.

Palathingal spends his time supporting victims and trying to make

people listen to their plight besides ensuring his children have

access to education, even if it means hiring private tutors as

schools have refused them admission.

" Right now we have around 20 children here. We are giving them

education, medicines. We are taking full care of them, also getting

them private tutors, " he said.

UN reports say street children, child sex workers and those from the

lower castes in India's age-old system of social groups are the most

at risk for the disease. (ANI)

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