Amid Hardships and Unchanged Behaviors

By PHYU PHYU THIN

Saturday, March 6, 2010

http://irrawaddy.org/opinion_story.php?art_id=17973

Some people have asked me what kinds of difficulty I have encountered while working on the prevention and eradication of HIV/AIDS. I said every job I do is full of hardships.

I and a few young people helping me have been thinking about HIV/AIDS awareness programs and how to approach HIV-infected people in order to provide them with medicine and proper treatment, and to reintegrate them into the society so they can continue their social lives. You can imagine how much trouble we will have to shoulder in implementing our work.

The most essential thing that we always have to talk about is financial problems. The less funding we receive, the more difficult it is to carry out our programs. Some of my friends have lent some assistance to us. I now rent a place from the local municipality in New Dagon Township where I am running a rehabilitation program for HIV patients. It includes vocational training such as spangling and sewing. Recently, I could open a nan-bread shop for four patients with contributions from a donor. One of the difficulties I have faced is that I still cannot work for many patients.

Amid these hardships, I have met with some people who still cannot change their behavior. Perhaps this is the most difficult thing to alter.

I also have experience with other young people who have gone back to their old ways—being naughty and drinking—after being infected with HIV. Treating such careless patients costs us more money and makes us more physically and mentally exhausted. However, this is not so bad. I have faced worse situations.

Most of my patients are not from urban areas. They don't have much knowledge about HIV/AIDS. They are farmers, drivers, truck attendants and others. Among them, there were five girls who were sex workers. They came from different backgrounds, but they use their bodies in the same way.

In my opinion, one of the girls is someone who cannot stand to be without a man. She made money and spent it with other men she liked. She earned money by using her body and used it again when she looked for happiness with other men. I don't even want to think about how much she has distributed HIV to others. Whenever I had a chance, I brought her home and tried to help her change her ways, but she always ran away and went back to her original life, living on the street.

Another girl is a singer from a restaurant. She has another story. She always told me that she only sang songs. But one day she made an unexpected visit to my house when I was away. The reason she came to my house was to tell my family that she would move to Sittwe for a better job since she could not survive in Rangoon. She also said that she had unprotected sex with a man who used to take care of her just to give him the disease, because he did not support her anymore. My family became furious.

My family treats HIV patients as if they were our close relatives. Almost every patient has eaten at my house. Perhaps the girl's familiarity with my family made her speak out very openly. Nevertheless, the act of deliberately spreading the disease is not something a human being should do.

Another girl works at a massage place. She is very beautiful. Her skin is so smooth that you would never think that she has been infected with HIV. She said she did not mean to do it, but for her future she had to approach a rich man who visited her place. That man took her to a karaoke room and they had sex without a condom. Even though she said she did not intend to do it, I think she should have prevented herself from spreading the disease. I came to know about it just because she told me.

Whenever I think about how many similar incidents like this have already taken place, I cannot sleep anymore. Sometimes I suddenly wake up at night, fearing the consequences of the spread.

I really am not very happy when I think about this. And I am very concerned about how to change the bad behavior and attitude of some HIV patients who I have come across.

Phyu Phyu Thin has cared for HIV and AIDS patients since 2002, providing counseling and education, sending them to clinics and providing accommodation in Rangoon to those coming for treatment from outlying areas.

A Town of Widows

By PHYU PHYU THIN

FEBRUARY, 2010 - VOLUME 18 NO.2

http://irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=17693&page=1

In a country where the government provides minimal general health care, citizens must take up the fight against HIV infection themselves.

A relatively prosperous transport hub for family-run trucking businesses, Kyaukpadaung’s high incidence of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV/AIDS) among its population is a major downside to the township’s heavy dependence on the transportation industry.

With the 1,500-meter peak of Mt Popa nearby bringing cooler breezes and water to an otherwise arid region of eastern Mandalay Division, Kyaukpadang’s location at a major crossroads near the geographical center of Burma favored the town’s development as a trucking center. With larger businesses operating up to 100 trucks, many of the town’s residents are employed in the industry, spending weeks at a time on the road.

On Burma’s roads at night, teenage students are known to flag down trucks with flashlights, hitching rides and lifting skirts, passing from truck to truck, leaving sordid memories and sexually transmitted diseases.

Even if the drivers are aware of the problem and want to protect themselves, condoms are often unavailable in rural stores dimly lit by oil-lamps, where snacks, tobacco and liquor are sold along with the services of garishly made-up teenagers in a tin hut out back. As a result, when men return to their families in Kyaukpadaung, they often take HIV/AIDS with them.

Kyaukpadaung was an ideal place for our group to put our HIV/AIDS prevention and care training into action. As youth members of the National League for Democracy, we had been selected by NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi to train at the UN Development Programme office in Rangoon.

On my first visit, I went to the town to help organize assistance from our group. By working with Kyaukpadaung’s people, we helped them to learn how to confront the disease as a community. They have become aware of how HIV is spread and are now more adept at preventing infection among newborn infants and children.

Those infected by HIV/AIDS now encourage each other to be open about their affliction, and many are willing to talk about their disease and have formed their own support group to assist each other.

They are ready to help others experiencing difficulties, such as when antiretroviral medicines fail to arrive on schedule due to supply problems in Rangoon or breakdowns in Burma’s antiquated transportation. Those who have remaining stocks of medicine willingly share with those who have run out and will be repaid in kind when new supplies arrive.

When one member suffers from an ailment such as diarrhea, another will help out at his or her home for the whole day if necessary, washing clothes, providing rehydration fluids and performing essential chores, often returning home late at night.

In many places it creates a stigma to announce HIV infection, but in Kyaukpadaung, not only do infected residents make themselves known to each other, they openly announce that they have been “bitten by A,” a local idiom meaning they are HIV positive, and they have no qualms about talking to the media or seeing their names in print.

If HIV victims in other towns could be as open as those of Kyaukpadaung, it would be a significant step in preventing the spread of the disease. The network that started in Kyaukpadaung has spread to Wundwin Township in Mandalay Division, and to Aunglan (Myayde), Magwe, Taungdwingyi and Yenanggyaung townships in Magwe Division and to some parts of Rangoon.

Shortage of funds exacerbated by the general poverty endemic in Burma is a constant problem. Network members must work hard to raise money to pay for treatment for fellow members or help new victims.

The HIV group in Yenanggyaung has even managed to raise enough surplus funding to open a grocery stall in the market, where HIV network members work in rotation. Two network members supervise the shop, managing its finances and assisting with travel expenses for infected patients who need to go to Rangoon for treatment.

Because the government spends so little money on health and education, support groups are usually the only means available for maintaining health among HIV victims and preventing more infection.

Of the self-help support groups set up so far, the Kyaukpadaung group is the most effective. I went to the town to teach but found I learned from its people. They were the only group that dared openly invite me, an NLD member the military government brands as an “infamous political activist.”

On my second visit, I went there on a pilgrimage, as well as to evade the authorities, who were trying to arrest me. The locals took me to various places around town, including the homes of some residents who may have been providing financial help to Kyaukpadaung’s HIV/AIDS network.

Before I left town, I overheard some youths in a tea shop cajoling each other to make sure they took condoms if they went to a karaoke bar. A sign on the outskirts of the town said, “Bon Voyage,” and I remembered the words of one HIV patient.

“Ma Phyu,” he said, “every second house in my town is the home of a widow.”

Phyu Phyu Thin, 37, has cared for HIV and AIDS patients since 2002, providing counseling and education, sending them to clinics and providing accommodation in Rangoon to those coming for treatment from outlying areas. Due to her political affiliation and strong support for the NLD, she faces harassment in her work and has been arrested and jailed on several occasions.

The faces of two HIV positive patients

by Phyu Phyu Thin
http://www.mizzima.com/edop/commentary/3089-the-faces-of-two-hiv-positive-patients.html

Friday, 27 November 2009 07:58

I would like to tell you the stories of two hapless and vulnerable HIV patients in Burma.

The first is a female farmer hailing from Magwe Division. She contracted the deadly virus from a blood transfusion after being admitted to a hospital for a miscarriage. Not knowing how she contracted HIV, she accused her husband of having unprotected extra-marital sex. She did not accept her husband's protestations and continued with her accusations against him.

The truth only set in once two visitors appeared at their home with frail bodies covered with sores. They had come to apologize and disclose that they had donated blood to the hospital before learning of their own HIV positive status. Both husband and wife were shocked and stunned. Our network member, Ko Parlay, then visited them and provided counseling services. After that, they were sent to me.

In this way, this lady reached me in Rangoon. She had no place to stay. Staying at a monastery was not convenient, so she was sent to a home owned by my father and to the AZG clinic run by Medicines Sans Frontier (MSF) – where she was provided with ARV, an HIV medication.

Initially, the medicine drove her insane. She would run through the streets naked.

At the time of the blood transfusion she received six bottles of blood. The hospital charged 20,000 kyats (US$ 20) for a screening test per bottle. So, she had to pay a total of 120,000 kyats to the hospital for this service.

"I can't understand. I can't understand the virus infected me through the blood transfusion. You said the virus infected me through a blood transfusion. It means I bought this disease with my 120,000 kyats," she told me.

Unfortunately, as I came to learn, the tainted blood was in a 'window period' with no detectable anti-bodies at the time of the screening test.

The second story I wish to relate involves a little child. He was only five when I met him, and had also contracted the virus through a blood transfusion. He was so lovely. His father is a Lance Corporal and his mother a school teacher. He had been admitted to Mingaladon Military Hospital with dengue fever.

His blood donor was a friend of his father’s and an individual donor on some 60 previous occasions. But no one knew he had unprotected sex with a sex worker before he gave his blood to this little child. The blood donor did not reveal the incidence to the doctors on duty, and the blood of such a well-known and regular donor was assumed to be safe.

A blame game ensued between the child's father and doctors. The hospital claimed the parents had infected the child.

I rushed with the parents to the National Blood Test Centre in order to protect them from an incorrect blood test report by the hospital. The subsequent blood tests came back negative.

I assisted them in suing the doctors and lodging a complaint with a child rights organization.

Eventually, his nun grandmother took him from us, saying everything that had happened to him was due to his pre-determined destiny. I was taken aback by the passivism of our people.

These stories are but two of the multitude of cases that have been brought to by attention.

(The writer is a member of the National League for Democracy (NLD) and a leading member of an HIV/AIDS awareness program)