Living with HIV: A story of mother and daughter
She has no idea she is sick; she is only five years old. This charming little girl does know, though, that if she ever sees any of her blood on her smooth skin, even the smallest dot, she must run straight to her mother and make sure no one else tries to clean up the blood. Where others should pull on plastic gloves, Zara’s mother Raha can act freely. She has no need of plastic barriers between her and her daughter, since she too is HIV-positive. Both mother and child were infected by Raha’s husband and first love, Amir, a baker. Soon after they married, Amir was working night shifts to support his new family. He started taking drugs to stay awake, then he took opium to sleep and later its cheaper substitute, heroine. He became one of an estimated 300,000 injecting drug addicts in Iran. Soon after, he contributed to another statistic and joined the 25 per cent, or estimated 75,000, injecting addicts who are HIV-positive. “Injecting drug users account for 60 per cent of all HIV infections in Iran, and so they represent a concentrated epidemic,” explains Renato Linsangan, UNICEF’s HIV/AIDS officer in Iran. Such drug users may infect others through sharing needles but also through unprotected sex. Their partners may in turn have sex with others and infect them or get pregnant and infect their babies. “In this way, HIV can quickly spread from groups with high-risk behaviour like drug addicts into the mainstream population, which can cause a generalized epidemic.” Though the Iranian government has worked hard to reduce HIV infection amongst addicts by providing free syringes, HIV tests and counseling, there has been no attempt to protect the wives and children of addicts with HIV. The vulnerability of these women and children is compounded by the general public’s lack of understanding about HIV/AIDS as well as restrictions on public discussion of all matters related to sex. For most Iranians, HIV/AIDS remains abstract and esoteric.
Raha had no idea what that meant. “I knew there was something very bad going on with my body, but I didn’t know what,” she explained. When she understood her daughter was also sick, she was very angry with her husband. He accused her of lying until he took a test and also had it confirmed. Only when she found the government-run Shargh Clinic in west Tehran did Raha really understand what HIV/AIDS was and how her husband had infected her. Now Amir is in prison and Raha lives in a large house, where she cooks and cleans for an Iranian family. Her employers know that both she and Zara are HIV-positive but they are kind and want to help. She doubts society at large will be so understanding. Next year Zara is to start kindergarten. “I don’t want to but I will have to tell the teachers at school, then everyone will know,” Raha said. Beyond her employers, Raha and Zara are very much on their own. Raha’s own family will accept her but not her child, while Amir’s parents now reject both of them even though they too are HIV-positive since Amir’s father is also a heroine addict and shared needles with his son. UNICEF Iran has started projects that will specifically target most-at-risk children, youth, and women. These are members of families whose heads-of-households are injecting drug users as well as those whose own sexual and other behaviours put them at risk of HIV infection. These projects are community-based interventions in high-risk areas of selected cities and focus districts within UNICEF programmes.
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