Church hospital fights HIV fears in Jammu
Church hospital fights HIV fears in Jammu
Dec 09, 2016

By Umar Shah
It is morning and Sister Annie is being briefed on the medical condition of 43-year-old Chand Kumar.* After testing positive for HIV, Kumar has been admitted to the church-run St. Joseph Hospital in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir.
Kumar and his wife had little education when they were young and found it difficult accessing information about the virus. Suffering from a continuous fever and coughing, Kumar went to hospital where he tested positive for HIV.
"We keep the identity of patients secret and only medical staff are authorized to go through their records," Sister Annie told ucanews.com.
For more than a decade the nun from the Sisters of Charity of Jesus and Mary congregation has been working in the hospital in Smailpur, run by the Jammu and Kashmir Catholic Social Service, the social action wing of the Jammu-Srinagar Diocese that covers the state.
On average, the hospital registers some 150 people with HIV a year, Sister Annie said. "People are mostly from very poor economic backgrounds" and lack awareness of the disease, she said.
"They do not know what medicine to take and when. Also, they sometimes get depressed and can develop mental illnesses due to fear of death and social discrimination," Sister Annie said.
In order to address this, the hospital "counsels their families about how to take care of patients at home." Medicines are distributed free of cost from the government, she said.
The hospital has witnessed several instances of families abandoning a patient in the final stages of the illness. "We make people aware that HIV doesn't mean death and, if due care is taken, a patient can lead a healthy life," she said.
The hospital also helps people facing social discrimination like Rita Kumari,* whose husband was diagnosed with HIV in 2015. Local people began to ridicule her family.
It was this hospital that came to our rescue and counseled the local people about HIV and how to treat people living with the disease, Kumari told ucanews.com.
Idress Andrabi, a doctor based in Jammu, said "in a conservative society like ours, HIV is a taboo. In some areas we have found the entire area socially boycotting the family of a person living with HIV," he said.
Andrabi, who works in a state hospital, added that the government isn't doing enough to support people living with HIV. They are not running awareness campaigns or making other efforts on how to help people with HIV live with the disease.
Aabid Gulzar a research scholar at the department of sociology in Kashmir University said that religion dominates the perspectives of the local society. People invariably link HIV with sex and so do not want to discuss it, he said.
"It is only after death that a family may agree that the person died of HIV-related illnesses," Gulzar said.
According to Saleem-ur-Rehman, state director of AIDS control, some 5,000 people live with HIV in the state and some 625 people have died of the disease.
However, the number of people testing positive is declining. There were 364 cases in 2015 but by November 2016, only 227 people tested positive, he said.
Rehman said that religious officials could use places of worship to raise awareness about the disease. "If religious heads can become part of the social cause, it will help keep HIV at bay in the long run," he told ucanews.com.
Father Saiju Chacko, director of the Jammu and Kashmir Catholic Social Service, told ucanews.com that the church has been organizing several HIV awareness programs and is ready to work towards eradicating the disease.
People in the cities and towns are aware of HIV but not those in the villages, he said. "We have been holding programs in far flung areas of the state," he added.
Most people get HIV through by having unprotected sex or sharing needles with someone who has HIV. It can also be passed from a mother to her baby during pregnancy, birth, or breastfeeding.
HIV or the human immunodeficiency virus can't be spread by casual contact like hugging, kissing or sharing food, using common utensils, clothes or sharing toilets with persons living with the virus. There is no risk in coughing or sneezing and is not passed on through sweat, tears, saliva or urine.--ucanews.com
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