Global AIDS - Papua New Guinea

Caring for the victims of AIDS in Papua New Guinea - By Maureen Gerawa
'Focus' article - Courier-Post, Pt Moresby - 26 October, 2004

IS HIV/AIDS the only serious problem affecting Papua New Guinea? If not, why is there so much emphasis on HIV/AIDS?

No-one would have thought this would come from someone who has done a lot for the people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA), but it is. Friends Foundation founder and director Tessie Soi says HIV/AIDS is like other chronic diseases and the only problem with it is stigma and discrimination.

In other words, PLWHAs can be trained to live normal lives if they are accepted by society as normal human beings.

“I feel that once discrimination and stigma are taken away the problem will become like a common disease,’’ she says. “It is the discrimination element that we need to deal with.’’

Nowhere else are they called friends, except in this organisation. Mrs Soi wants to make known to the public that PLWHAs are normal except that they have a virus that cannot be cured. She says she had founded the Friends Foundation initially to help PLWHAs because the hospital had limited resources and could not cater for basic needs of these people. But she now feels PLWHAs who have been trained to look after themselves can go ahead and live their lives while the foundation can concentrate on the children who are vulnerable to all sorts of abuse. A senior social worker, Mrs Soi has often gone beyond her professional job by actually giving bus fares to people who come to see her and have no money to return home. She has also bought food for them with her own money because they have not eaten anything.

It has come to her attention after helping so many people for many years that HIV/AIDS is just one of the many problems but it is getting more attention than all the others. She says there are issues of domestic violence that are increasing where women are being beaten and killed, children abused both physically and sexually and having nowhere to go because there is no system in place to cater for them. On the other hand, unemployed husbands feel neglected by their families, especially by spouses with high earning jobs who make them feel they are not needed anymore.

The poverty rate is also increasing, with many families not having enough to eat or even missing food for days.

For instance, a woman is dying from breast cancer and her husband has no bus fare to go and see if his relatives can help. So he walks all the way to Gerehu carrying with him a two-year-old boy. He starts in the afternoon, and when he gets there the relatives are not there so he returns but he has to walk back with the child in his arms. When he reaches the hospital at night, the nurse caring for his wife scolds him for leaving the wife for many hours. The man has not eaten all day.

She says her staff were working with the health workers on the mother-to-child intervention program at the antenatal clinic which is aimed at preventing babies of HIV positive mothers from getting infected with the virus. But there is no program put in place to cater for the orphans who will be growing up from parents who have died from HIV/AIDS.

“As hospital staff, we are introducing this program but what will happen to the children when their parents have died? The problem will surface,’’ she says.

Previously, the foundation had an outreach program and its volunteers went out to visit PLWHAs in the communities. But that has been put on hold while the volunteers wait for funds to have it registered and serviced.

In the meantime, the 18-member taskforce of the foundation has been raising funds through the sale of ribbons for K2 to bury the bodies that are unclaimed at the hospital morgue and help feed hospitalised PLWHAS. The daily feeds she says may be only a small bowl per person but it makes a difference to these people who need food in their stomachs when they take medicine. The hospital provides meals only in the morning and dinner.

The majority of the taskforce members are young men in their teens or early 20s.

“We are giving them food and it’s not much. In the process, we’re sensitising the young people involved in the friends foundation taskforce. They are seeing the real dilemma of AIDS. It blew them away when they realised how serious the problem can be. Apart from burying people, Friends Foundation does what people don’t want to do but we can’t do it alone,’’ she says. “We’re doing it for all of us. If you can’t come you can pray and give to support the work.’’

She appealed for kind people to donate a rice cooker and a small electric stove to replace the ones that her organisation lost during a power disruption last week. In the meantime, they are giving the PLWHAs fruit instead of cooked food. She thanked individuals and organisations such as the Indian Association for helping support the organisation.

Meanwhile, Mrs Soi has recommended all suburbs in Port Moresby have counsellors to respond to the growing social problems. She says in 1960s and early 1970s, each urban clinic had a welfare officer — which had been done away with. She says each clinic should have a counsellor who is not a nurse — or a medical staff member whose job is to counsel people with all sorts of social problems. There should also be a child welfare office who should deal with community related problems. She says in this way, a monitoring system will be put in place and these issues can be documented.

She says the AIDS Federation was already providing counselling services at Gerehu clinic and urges non-government organisations to do the same in other suburbs.

“I’d like to talk to a donor who is interested in funding this project. The non-government organisations within the suburb clinics can attach themselves to give help to the counsellor,’’ she says.