Inter Press Service - October 14, 1999
Lira Dalangin

That even Sales, president of an organisation of Filipinos living with HIV/AIDS, remains fearful of her family discovering that she has the virus shows how discrimination against this group of people still remains deeply ingrained.

Unknown to Lea, who got the virus from her husband in 1988, her husband already tested positive for the virus before they got married. A few months before he died, he went back to Australia for a vacation.

"My mother-in-law called me and told me to follow him there. When I got to Australia, he was already in his deathbed and was very weak," recalls Sales, who took care of him for three months before he passed away.

"I was mad at him at first for not telling me the truth, but then I realised he did this so I should not worry. What's unfortunate is that I got the disease, too," says Sales, who leads the group called 'Pinoy Plus'. ("Pinoy" is the colloquial term for 'Filipino'.)

Sales and 25 other people with HIV live in a separate building at the Department of Health called 'Bahay Lingap' (Home of Care).

There, they are provided with free rations of food, medicine, and other daily needs. Hospital counselors see to their needs, act as surrogate family, and provide a listening ear. A team of doctors -- specialists in tropical medicine -- conducts daily check-ups on them.

Except when there are no available medicines, Sales says their material needs are well provided for at Bahay Lingap. "But if we had a choice, we'd rather stay home with our families."

Home is what many of them do not have or are turned away from -- but despite the loneliness and worries about death they are looking beyond themselves and conducting AIDS awareness campaigns, helping raise funds. From being mere patients, they are trying to be care-givers to their peers.

Pinoy Plus, which gets funding support from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) also gives seminars on effective health care, office management to its members and other groups working with HIV/ AIDS. Many have been interviewed on radio and television and speak before local and international fora.

Organised in November 1994, Pinoy Plus is the only organisation in the country of people living with HIV/AIDS. Its membership has grown from seven to 75 today.

"I have nowhere and nobody to turn to, except Pinoy Plus," Sales adds. But afterwards I realised that this organisation is more than just a bonding of people living with HIV/AIDS, but a social group as well that empowers its members to stand up and say 'we have AIDS but this doesn't make us lesser individuals."

"I'd like to think that we have a more benevolent public now, but the reception also varies according to communities," says Renee Faldas, manager of a joint health-department UNDP project called "Promoting Multi-Sectoral and Community-based Approaches to HIV Prevention and Care in the Philippines".

The project, which began in August 1998, aims to strengthen Pinoy Plus in carrying out its mission of promoting welfare, providing support and empowering people with HIV/AIDS.

"You wouldn't believe that even among the most elite circles and the educated ones, discrimination remains high because of wrong yet popular information about AIDS," Faldas says.

The Department of Health (DOH) says the official count of HIV cases in the country was at 1,259 as of July, while there were 404 who had AIDS. But AIDS experts say the real figures could be 20 to 30 times bigger.

Since the early 1990s, the DOH has been running an awareness campaign to limit the spread of the pandemic while increasing public understanding of it.

This is why the health department-UNDP project focuses on responses to HIV/AIDS that allow the community to become part of the fight against the disease, instead of a campaign that concentrates only on so-called "high risk" groups. Says Faldas: "HIV/AIDS is more than just a health problem. It has serious implications too on the development of the country."

"For example, the mother or the father gets afflicted with HIV," explains Faldas. "Most likely, he will lose his job because his productivity will slow down. This is doubly hard especially if he is the sole income earner of the family. AIDS also has a socio-economic impact not only to the (person with HIV) and his family but also to the society as a whole."

Thus, the DOH-UNDP project also aims to strengthen local bodies working with aids and to develop a "home care" programme to encourage reintegration of HIV-positive people into their homes and communities.

Indeed, Sales hopes that more training on stress management and conflict resolution will also help patients cope with the daily stress brought about by their physical condition.

Last month, a nurse filed a complaint at the health department after she was hit with a stick by an HIV patient. Sales says the nurse was "rude" to the patient, who was very sick at that time. "Under our condition, can you blame us if we sometimes behave this way?"

She recommends training, too, for nurses and security guards who attend to patients living with HIV because "many of them are insensitive to our needs". Despite their physical condition, Jack Reyes, chair of the committee on education, training of Pinoy Plus, believes that the task of AIDS awareness campaign relies heavily on them.

Mercedes Apilado, UN volunteer for the DOH-UNDP project, adds that a law, called the Philippine AIDS Prevention and Control Act of 1998, aims to strengthen this drive with legal backing. "When before, we concern ourselves with AIDS because we think it's right, now we do it because it's right and at the same it is mandated," she explains.

So far, Apilado says Pinoy Plus and its members who have openly spoken about living with HIV/AIDS are making headway in easing some of the stigma the illness brings. "Pinoy Plus has been very instrumental in promoting increased awareness and acceptance of the public on HIV/ AIDS," she explains.

"Their testimonies have somehow given AIDS a human face, that they are real people and that they could be your friends, your neighbours, your family -- or you," says Apilado.

Yet it is telling that the Pinoy Plus members who become educators still find it necessary to take on pseudonyms when they tell the public their stories.

"When we conduct HIV awareness seminars, we still have to use a microphone so that people will hear us because they sit at the farthest end of the room," Faldas adds. "So we tell them that AIDS is not transmitted through the air to break the common misconceptions about the disease."

"The death of our peers," continues Sales, "also depresses us a lot because whenever this happens, we begin to wonder who will be next, or will I be next?"

In September alone, four persons have died in Bahay Lingap, bringing to more than 10 victims who succumbed to AIDS this year.

"We also have to accept that their mortality rate is higher, that's why the turnover of officers or members is faster," Apilado adds. "You train people and they become experts in their own right. Unfortunately, they pass away." (END/IPS/ap-he- hd/ld/cb/js/99)
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