Inter Press Service - September 26, 1999
Kevin Pamba

After all, the high school graduate is about to become a single mother soon, and she needs all the moral support she can get. Mary also happens to have tested positive for HIV, which causes AIDS, and that has complicated her already troubled young life.

But in the newly formed Friends Foundation, Mary may just find some of the help she may be needing at this time. Organised by the Papua New Guinea National AIDS Council and several overseas aid agencies, the Foundation seeks not only to provide a hand to people like Mary, but also to involve them in seeking ways to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.

PNG had its first recorded HIV case in 1987. As of March this year, the country has had 1,741 recorded HIV/AIDS cases since.

The number is one of the lowest totals in the Asia-Pacific, but experts caution that this does not mean that PNG is doing far better than the rest of the region in combatting the disease.

National AIDS Council Secretariat Director Clement Malau points out that there has been a "dramatic increase" of late in PNG's HIV/AIDS figures, with some 16 new infections for every 100,000 population -- in a country of only 4.5 million people.

"HIV and AIDS are already widespread in the country and have been reported in all 20 provinces," he says. "As of March 1999, 185 new cases of HIV infections and 41 cases of AIDS have been reported."

"AIDS is now the leading cause of death in the Port Moresby General Hospital," adds Dr Malau. "It is predicted that the (total HIV/AIDS) figure will get worse in the next 12 months. AIDS is therefore an undeniable threat to our country (and) should be taken seriously by everyone."

Indeed, this situation prompted the Council and other groups to quickly cobble together a multisectoral approach in fighting the disease. The Friends Foundation, in fact, is only one part of the country's anti-AIDS battle plan is supported by four United Nations agencies, among other groups.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) alone contributes between 100,000 to 200,000 dollars annually to the PNG HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention programmes.

UNDP official Steven Ilave says the agency and other UN organisations are drawing from their experiences in fighting AIDS in Africa especially to figure out how best to help PNG.

In terms of HIV/AIDS awareness and impact, he says, PNG is in the same stage Africa was 10 years ago. At the time, he says, people there were so caught in cultural taboos that those with HIV were driven underground and discussions about the disease were not welcome.

That is now happening here in PNG, says Ilave. What the government is trying to prevent is a repeat as well of what came next in Africa -- "people dying left, right and centre".

As in Africa and several other places, sexual matters are simply not discussed here, which makes it hard for people to talk about HIV/AIDS, not least because unprotected heterosexual sex is the main mode of transmission of the virus. Although the illness can spread through other means aside from unprotected sex with an infected person, AIDS carries a social stigma that makes it hard for those who get it to go public, or sometimes even for their own relatives not to turn them away.

In truth, Mary's equally young boyfriend, who is suspected to have passed on the HIV to her, "disappeared" once he learned she had tested positive for the virus.

As it is, the real identities of Mary and the other members of her new group are known only to a few people, including Tessie Soi, senior medical social worker at the Port Moresby Hospital.

This precaution is necessary to spare Mary and her friends from discrimination and stigmatisation. Already, two of the group's members have been fired from their jobs after routine medical check-ups by their companies revealed they have HIV.

So far, there are no laws in PNG making such action illegal. The National AIDS Council, however, is now at work on new legislation that will protect people with HIV/AIDS from unlawful dismissal and discrimination.

Soi says Mary's group is only one of the Foundation's three work clusters. Mary's group, which consists of people with HIV/AIDS, is meant primarily as a support organisation allowing them to help one another, and see how they can help prevent the pandemic's spread.

Another Foundation cluster is the so-called "Friends Club", which is made up of volunteers who will regularly visit and meet people with HIV/AIDS at the hospital. The third group consists of corporate leaders who provide support for the programme.

Malau notes that the disease is affecting the "young and sexually active and economically important members of the country".

AIDS experts admit they are in for a tough fight in preventing a rise in the number of HIV infections. In a recent workshop, Malau noted that "given our socio-cultural and geo-political diversity, innovation is needed in Papua New Guinea for a national response to HIV/AIDS".

In truth, at least 860 languages are spoken in this country, in which 85 percent of the people still live in rural areas where superstitions remain strong. There are also great disparities in incomes and education.

Thus, Malau said at the workshop, "support needs to be obtained from everyone in society for any preventive and care initiative to be more successful." He stressed that the country's future is at stake. "What is done now," he says, "will have an effect 10 or more years down the line."
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