By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW, Aug 23 2005 (IPS)

Thousands of children born to HIV-positive mothers are being abandoned, new data shows.

The women themselves face widespread discrimination, even from doctors who often deny treatment and betray confidentiality.

According to official data now made available, more than 10,000 HIV-positive women have given birth by February this year, and more than 20 percent of them have abandoned their babies. Most doctors and officials believe that the HIV incidence is far higher than officially recognised.

A Human Rights Watch report says children are often segregated for no medical reasons. This may be necessary “not because these children are dangerous for society, but (because) we are dangerous for them. Keeping them all together is one way of protecting them from society.”

The culture of fear surrounding HIV/AIDS has also led to virtual isolation of the affected women. Many choose to hide their diagnosis from co-workers, friends and family rather than face the consequences.

“Russian law protects all HIV-positive people from discrimination, but the government has turned a blind eye to the very real discrimination these women and their children face,” Lois Whitman, children’s rights director at Human Rights Watch told IPS. “The stigma of HIV/AIDS is with them everywhere: in the workplace, at school, at the neighbourhood clinic, even in their own homes.”

Many HIV-positive women have reported being verbally abused by doctors and nurses, or even being denied treatment.

Their children are born into a life where they will face discrimination from day one. The majority of children born to HIV-positive mothers remain with their families. But their parents soon find that the children are not welcome at school.

Children who are abandoned are usually placed in specialised orphanages for HIV-positive children, or isolated in hospital wards.

State duma (parliament) deputy and chair of the women, children and family affairs committee Ekaterina Lakhova says many Russians who believe they are not biased often unconsciously are.

“While we as politicians and rights activists have made considerable progress in fighting for integration and welfare of our women and children, there are still people who continue to divide society. The situation might get much worse than we thought it would,” she told IPS.

“It’s madness when these people are fired from their jobs, or have their rental agreements torn up, and receive inadequate care when it is revealed they have HIV/AIDS,” she said. “Breaches of confidentiality can and do unravel people’s lives, forcing them to find new jobs, new schools and new homes.”

Regional director at the Aids Foundation East-West (AFEW) Julie Dixon said pregnant women and mothers tested positive for HIV could become a serious social problem if the government did not act now.

“Discrimination usually discourages them from seeking proper information on how best to deal with the disease, find support from others in similar situations, and receive medical attention and care,” she told IPS. “Additionally, discrimination forces them underground when they should demand equal treatment and acceptance by the general population, and this can seriously and negatively affect the child’s development both socially and psychologically.”

Underlying these attitudes could be a resistance to things foreign. Russians think the virus did not originate in their country, and therefore anyone who contracts it becomes an outcast, says Transatlantic Partners Against AIDS (TPAA) programmes director Alec Khachatrian.

“It’s only now that Russia has publicly recognised that the disease exists in society after several years silence on the part of government authorities,” Khachatrian told IPS. “Russia can only win its struggle against child abandonment if it gives priority to fighting the disease by public education and giving adequate financial support as well as necessary material assistance.”

Khachatrian said the state would be doing irreversible damage to HIV sufferers if it allows them to be discriminated against. “These women have equal rights as state citizens and must necessarily be given access to everything within the stipulated laws of the country. They are not criminals to be isolated.”

Khachatrian opposed abortions as a solution. HIV-positive women need to be welcome, and have their privacy guarded, he said. Ways of integrating them into society need to be worked out, he said.

Ignorance about the virus – even in the medical community – is one of the biggest problems affecting people living with HIV/AIDS, Khachatrian said. “In a society as large as Russia this is a difficult task and very challenging, but starting from the medical community where these women make the first contact could be a step in the right direction.”

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