InterPress News Service (IPS); 16 April 1997
Prangtip Daorueng

Samran is among tens of thousands of housewives in Thailand who got the deadly virus from their husbands. This group, the Public Health Ministry says, comprises about 10 per cent of the estimated 800,000 HIV-infected people in the country.

Thailand was among the first in Asia to experience AIDS, which the government considers not just a health menace but a social and development problem.

About 14,000 people in Thailand have died of AIDS over the past 10 years, although the World Health Organisation says cases of new HIV infections are on a decline.

"I had never known about AIDS before. All I knew was my husband looked different when he came back," said 38-year-old Samran, referring to her husband's return home after an eight-month liaison with another woman. "He was too sick to work and I had to take care of him all the time."

After her husband's death, Samran went for a blood test and found out she was HIV-positive. Summoning up enough courage, she walked to her 12-year old son's school one day and told his teacher she had the virus that causes AIDS.

"The experience I gained during the time I took care of my husband made me think that I should let some people know that I am HIV-positive. I knew that one day I would be like him and people will know anyway. To tell them now is to make them prepare to see me sick. If someone wants to stay away from me, they can do it right away," said the mother of four.

Her decision turned her desperate life into a hopeful one. Being encouraged by a group of school teachers and the community hospital, Samran is now an active organizer of an AIDS victims group in Nangrong district of Bureeram province, working with other HIV patients from other provinces in the northeastern part of the country.

"I was shocked when Samran came to me and said she got AIDS," recalled Kwansiri Chanakieart, a village schoolteacher. "AIDS that seemed so far away from me suddenly came so close." Kwansiri admitted that despite her knowledge of AIDS from books and media, she had never been so aware of the situation in her own backyard.

After Samran came to her for help, Kwansiri began to realise there were many more HIV-infected people in the district, some of them are fathers and mothers of her own students.

"We have found 88 cases in the district. But we estimate that it is only one out of eleven HIV infected cases in the area," said Dr Sa-aad Wilaijaroen, director of Nangrong district hospital.

According to him, most of the HIV patients who have come to the hospital are poor workers returning from years of working in neighbouring towns and 100 per cent got the disease through sexual contact.

The hospital has started a day-care clinic for HIV/AIDS patients, where they get not only medicine but also support from one another.

"In the eyes of many people, AIDS is a shameful and frightening disease so people who have HIV always want to hide. What we try to do is convince them to join us in order to encourage them to face the society and to control the disease from spreading," explained Dr Sa-aad.

"The biggest age group we found is 20 to 29 years old, many of them went to the South to work in fishing boats which went out to sea for months. Others were in construction sites in town," he said.

Dr Sa-aad says there have been no studies to gauge the level of awareness among people of this age group. "But the thing we know is they are poor people from the village who don't have jobs."

Many unskilled workers from the northeastern part of Thailand have who left their homes to seek better-paying jobs in Bangkok and other big cities have been identified as among the biggest source of HIV infections.

These men land jobs in the city, where they also pick up certain sexual habits that make them vulnerable to HIV. Returning to their villages, these HIV carriers pass on the virus to their spouses.

It is in the villages where the level of HIV/AIDS awareness is very low and where people like Samran play an important role. Last month she represented the district in the meeting of HIV infected people in the northeast, where they discussed proposals they hope to submit to the government.

The want free medical treatment in government hospitals, free tuition for the children of poor AIDS victims and free funeral services for the victims.

Apart from her formal tasks, Samran also opens her house to HIV infected people needing help. These are mostly women who find out after testing that they are HIV-positive and who are unable to come to grips with reality. What she usually does is give them advice and encourage them to face the situation.

"I always tell them, as I tell myself, that with or without AIDS, everybody will die one day. Sometimes when I visit those who are in the terminal stage, the thought that I would be like them sooner or later enters my mind. I try to get rid of the idea as quick as possible. It is not easy but I need to go on," Samran said.

"Every AIDS victim hopes that one day doctors will find some kind of cure for the disease and this hope helps us to carry on with our lives," she added. (END/IPS/AP-HE/PD/RAL/97)

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