Jaipur, Tuesday 12 February 2013
HIV has a devastating impact on families here. What tends to happen is that the man contracts the disease through sleeping around and then passes it on to his wife. Once he finds out that he's HIV+, he goes into a downward spiral, drinking, and then his health deteriorates all the quicker. He dies, leaving his wife with both the disease and the children to manage on her own. He was the sole bread winner, and even if she had the skills to generate an income, if her disease isn't managed, she'll be too ill to work anyway. Sometimes, she passes on the disease to unborn children, who are then born with it, so now she has to take care of their illness, too.
Enter the second organisation we visited - an orphanage for children with HIV.
It looked like any other house in the street when we pulled up in front of it in our rickshaw. When I think of an orphanage, I picture a large building with dormitory rooms. Instead, here was a house with about four bedrooms downstairs, a living room and a kitchen.
In it, there were about 30 children, all of whom are HIV+. They're from three or four years old up to 18, and most would have been born with the disease. Some of them have no living parents, but others are from families like I described above, where the father is dead and the mother can't cope and has had to give them up. Sometimes, those children visit with their mother for short periods and then return to the orphanage.
They have frequent hospital visits, for check-ups and to get their HIV drugs, but other than that they lead normal lives in the orphanage, attending school. To see them scoffing their lunch and playing games together, you can't see any visible sign that they have an illness, and you forget within minutes that they are HIV+.
I have never knowingly met someone with HIV/AIDS before, and have to admit to not knowing a lot about the disease and how you can/can't catch it. It was a question I asked the woman who runs the orphanage and an Australian volunteer there. I was curious as to whether they ever had any concerns about it being transmitted to them. If you leave aside unprotected sex, it's only really blood to blood contact that can spread the disease. Blood from someone who's HIV+ would have to enter your bloodstream. You don't catch AIDS from day-to-day contact with people, and so they had no concerns. The woman's toddler daughter spends her days at the orphanage playing with the kids who live there.
Happily, the kids don't tend to face discrimination in school because of having the disease, which I found surprising. But the neighbours around the orphanage have voiced concerns. This won't be a problem for much longer, because a donor has given the orphanage some land on which to build a new orphanage. Construction starts in a few weeks. They have enough money to get started, but have a lot of fundraising to do to raise the money to finish the building off. Fingers crossed for them.
I utterly admire the woman who runs the orphanage. She clearly started off on a small scale, and, as the need has grown, so has the responsibility on her. With 30 kids in her care, there's no turning back now. She obviously has balls of steel, and has lobbied hard for the rights of these kids. Her work paid off recently, when her lobbying helped get an amendment to a law which gives kids access to education. The law was such that you had to provide certain paperwork in order to get the kids a place in a school, but for these children it was impossible. Now there's an exception made for children who are HIV+. The story was covered in the newspapers here.
Don't ever let anyone tell you that one person can't make a difference!
Yesterday, I went to visit two other charities in Jaipur for the day, with Gabi, the other volunteer here. They both support people who are HIV+ or have AIDS. The rate of HIV infection in India is growing, and the majority of people (87%) catch it through unprotected sex. It's a society where there's still a stigma attached to buying and using condoms, and the price is very high.
The first organisation we went to works mainly with adults. The man who founded it is HIV+ himself, and admitted he caught it after sleeping with someone outside his marriage. His organisation provides counselling for people affected by this disease, helps them get access to the free retro-viral drugs provided by the government, and does a lot of lobbying among politicians and other opinion formers.
HIV has a devastating impact on families here. What tends to happen is that the man contracts the disease through sleeping around and then passes it on to his wife. Once he finds out that he's HIV+, he goes into a downward spiral, drinking, and then his health deteriorates all the quicker. He dies, leaving his wife with both the disease and the children to manage on her own. He was the sole bread winner, and even if she had the skills to generate an income, if her disease isn't managed, she'll be too ill to work anyway. Sometimes, she passes on the disease to unborn children, who are then born with it, so now she has to take care of their illness, too.
Enter the second organisation we visited - an orphanage for children with HIV.
It looked like any other house in the street when we pulled up in front of it in our rickshaw. When I think of an orphanage, I picture a large building with dormitory rooms. Instead, here was a house with about four bedrooms downstairs, a living room and a kitchen.
 |
| The orphanage, with an American volunteer on the verandah, and one of the kids out front |
In it, there were about 30 children, all of whom are HIV+. They're from three or four years old up to 18, and most would have been born with the disease. Some of them have no living parents, but others are from families like I described above, where the father is dead and the mother can't cope and has had to give them up. Sometimes, those children visit with their mother for short periods and then return to the orphanage.
They have frequent hospital visits, for check-ups and to get their HIV drugs, but other than that they lead normal lives in the orphanage, attending school. To see them scoffing their lunch and playing games together, you can't see any visible sign that they have an illness, and you forget within minutes that they are HIV+.
 |
| The American volunteer, Matthew, playing with the children. |
I have never knowingly met someone with HIV/AIDS before, and have to admit to not knowing a lot about the disease and how you can/can't catch it. It was a question I asked the woman who runs the orphanage and an Australian volunteer there. I was curious as to whether they ever had any concerns about it being transmitted to them. If you leave aside unprotected sex, it's only really blood to blood contact that can spread the disease. Blood from someone who's HIV+ would have to enter your bloodstream. You don't catch AIDS from day-to-day contact with people, and so they had no concerns. The woman's toddler daughter spends her days at the orphanage playing with the kids who live there.
Happily, the kids don't tend to face discrimination in school because of having the disease, which I found surprising. But the neighbours around the orphanage have voiced concerns. This won't be a problem for much longer, because a donor has given the orphanage some land on which to build a new orphanage. Construction starts in a few weeks. They have enough money to get started, but have a lot of fundraising to do to raise the money to finish the building off. Fingers crossed for them.
 |
| The orphanage girls giving it some on the roof, to their favourite Bollywood tunes! |
I utterly admire the woman who runs the orphanage. She clearly started off on a small scale, and, as the need has grown, so has the responsibility on her. With 30 kids in her care, there's no turning back now. She obviously has balls of steel, and has lobbied hard for the rights of these kids. Her work paid off recently, when her lobbying helped get an amendment to a law which gives kids access to education. The law was such that you had to provide certain paperwork in order to get the kids a place in a school, but for these children it was impossible. Now there's an exception made for children who are HIV+. The story was covered in the newspapers here.
Don't ever let anyone tell you that one person can't make a difference!
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