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| With reference to the news article "MB
Blames Moral Decay for HIV Rise" today, it is disheartening
to return from a very successful 8th International Congress
on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific (ICAAP) in Colombo to read of
the ignorance of some of our political leaders. It would be
good to have a proper critique of my paper by someone who has
actually read it but to have to respond to what is obviously
a kneejerk reaction seems almost a waste of time. |
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| For the sake of clarity however, it should
be pointed out that Kelantan , famed for its religious piety,
has consistently recorded the highest numbers of HIV infections
in our country. In 2006 alone it reported 998 new cases of HIV
infection, slightly more than the allegedly far more decadent
Federal Territory which had 921 and Selangor which had 866.
In most cases, these were among injecting drug users, of which
Kelantanese are very well-represented. |
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| My small study with Sumathi Govindasamy
attempted to understand what was the situation for 56 out of
over 300 HIV-positive widows in Kota Bharu who were diagnosed
at the Raja Perempuan Zainab Hospital. It was clear that these
widows had very little knowledge about HIV/AIDS before they
became infected by their own husbands, most of whom were injecting
drug users. None of them knew their husbands were infected until
doctors diagnosed them, often at a very late stage. Many however
did know that their husbands were drug users before they got
married but they did not make the connection between their husbands'
drug use and their husbands' and their own vulnerability to
HIV infection. This is primarily due to lack of education about
the links between drug use and HIV among people in the state
of Kelantan where there are already high rates of poverty, drug
use and gender inequality. Even if they knew, most of these
women believed that to talk about condoms with their husbands
would invite violence against themselves. |
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| It was also interesting to note from the
study that the HIV-negative men who married these HIV-positive
women still did not use condoms despite knowing their wives'
status. Although the wives often reminded them to use condoms,
they were powerless to insist because they felt that the man
had the right to not use them and also because they felt gratitude
that their husbands married them and therefore were not inclined
to do anything that might cause abandonment or divorce. Not
using condoms in this case endangered the men, not the women
but it is not the fault of the women. |
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| Moral decay simply does not come into it,
unless one counts as immoral the state authorities' failure
to educate their people about HIV/AIDS. I feel that the Menteri
Besar owes an apology to all these HIV-positive widows for insulting
them by implying that they became infected because they were
somehow morally deficient. All they had done was get married
and have children. Today all of them are trying to do their
best to survive for their own and their children's sakes. It
would help if the state cared about them a bit more instead
of making unfounded judgements on their morality. |
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| Thank you |
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| Yours truly, |
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| Marina Mahathir |
| Adviser, Malaysian AIDS Council and
Foundation |
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