Buried alive

MANY people with HIV/AIDS in the Tari area of Southern Highlands have been buried alive by relatives.

More face the same fate unless people are trained to look after HIV people, says a woman who witnessed the “live” burials.
Margaret Marabe, a person living with HIV/AIDS, from Yangome village in Tari, said she had seen people buried alive.

“I saw three people with my own eyes. When they got very sick and people could not look after them, they buried them,” she said in Tok Pisin.
Ms Marabe claimed that one of the PLWHAs was calling out “mama mama” as the soil was put over his head.
Village people have also told her it was common for people to bury alive PLWHAs.

She lives in Port Moresby where she is an active advocate on HIV/AIDS issues, but went to the village early this year and spent five months carrying out awareness on HIV/AIDS in her home area by walking from one village to another with 30 volunteers.

She also opened a care centre in Yangome village that is serving 10 villages in the area. The building was constructed by the villagers and is now being used also as a drop-in centre for PLWHAs and a training place for positive living for PLWHAs.

On the day that the care centre was opened a total of 126 people with HIV declared their HIV status for the first time in public.

She returned to Port Moresby last week, saying she used her own resources to do her work to help prevent further spread of HIV. There was no support from the Southern Highlands Provincial AIDS Committee or non-government organisations involved in the HIV fight.

She appealed to the National Government and development partners to ensure the comprehensive awareness on HIV/AIDS being seen in urban areas reached rural areas.

“There are no voluntary counselling training centres in Tari. “There are also no training programs on HIV conducted by non-government organisations and the Government in this part of the country,” she said.

Government workers, including teachers, policemen and PNG Defence Force personnel were invited to the opening of the care centre which many used as the opportunity to talk about HIV/AIDS.

As a token of appreciation to the villagers for taking the initiative to build the care centre, she had a pig killed which she has yet to pay for to go with the feast. “It was the first time for people to see a care centre. They have heard of HIV/AIDS, but they do not know about positive living. People also do not know how to look after and take care of sick PLWHAs),’’ she said.

There is also no antiretroviral treatment at Tari Hospital where there are already people with HIV/AIDS sick with “opportunistic” infections.

"It's just leaving us totally confused. The developments are so fast and we're not given time to adapt," she said.