Sunday Times, South Africa - December 6, 1998
Prega Govender and Taschica Pillay

Among the casualties are children younger than four.

As World Aids Day was observed this week, statistics show that scores of people living in Chatsworth, Phoenix, Tongaat, Verulam and Mount Edgecombe have died of AIDS-related illnesses, with hundreds more being infected with the virus.

In Chatsworth alone, at least 30 people, including 11 children, have died of AIDS in the last 10 months. These are only the reported cases. Nine people from the Tongaat/Verulam area have died of the disease in the last three years.

But health officials and social workers this week warned the reported deaths were just the tip of the iceberg.

Selva Moodley, a director for community health services at the North Central Local Council, said their research had found that at least 174 people in the Tongaat, Verulam, Frasers and Mount Edgecombe areas were HIV positive.

"There are 111 men with 60 women and four teenagers. Although these figure may seem quite small, AIDS has become a very serious problem in the Indian community."

Moodley said traditionally most Indian families believed in high moral values because of their upbringing and closely knit family structure.

"But with the creeping in of Western influences, lots of them have now become promiscuous. There also appears to be ignorance among many of them towards practising safe sex," he said.

Honey Allee, an AIDS programme co-ordinator at the Chatsworth Child and Family Welfare Society, said the disease was spreading at an alarming rate in the local Indian community.

"Most of them do not believe AIDS will affect their families. They believe it is a disease of other communities.

"During some of our awareness campaigns, Indians have told us that AIDS is a black man's disease. But the blacks claim it is a white man's disease," she said.

Allee said most of the Indian women who had died of AIDS had been factory workers and housewives.

"Most of the victims were between the ages of 20 and 45 years, while the children who are infected range from one to three years old," she said.

She said many pupils had approached them when AIDS awareness programmes were conducted at schools.

Rehana Khan, a social worker at the Phoenix Child and Family Welfare, said they attended to about 279 children orphaned as a result of AIDS between 1997 and 1998.

Alida Boshoff, a director for the Institute for Social Services in Johannesburg, said the incidence of AIDS among Indians may be deceptively low as many members of this community were either afraid or embarrassed to report their HIV positive status.

"At least about two percent of Indians in Fordsburg and Lenasia are HIV positive. But we have had cases of people reporting illnesses such as tuberculosis. The bottom line is that Indians who have AIDS don't want to come forward," Boshoff said.

Feroza Ismail, a social worker from the Pretoria and District Child Welfare Society, said AIDS was relatively unknown in Laudium.

"The subject is still very much taboo and people are sensitive about reporting it openly. But it is a fairly isolated disease in the Indian community here," she said.
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