Women, children paying for men’s mistakes

Twenty-five-years-old Sharada (name changed) from Gulmi district, is HIV positive. Her late husband, a labourer who returned from India, transmitted the virus to her.

Her two girls, one eight-years-old and the other of two-and-half-years, also have HIV. Sharada and her children have been living in Maiti Nepal, an organisation working for the welfare of women and children, for the past four years.

"I relised that we had the virus only after my husband died," she said, as her kids played with other urchins in the nearby day-care centre.

"He lived in India most of the time during our married life," she continued, ruing her conjugal life. "After he got sick, he returned home but he never told me he had HIV/AIDS. I took care of him, but he died after two months."

The story doesn’t end here. After Sharada’s husband died, her father-in-law took her to the nearby hospital for medical check-up. It was then her dreams shattered: a test showed that she, too, had human immuno virus.Later tests revealed her children also were HIV positive.

Sharada represents hundreds of women in the country who are suffering because of their husbands and their "irresponsible behaviour." UNAIDS estimates that 4,000 women in the country are HIV positive. Although female sex workers have been found to be most vulnerable, HIV/AIDS has started to take a heavy toll on housewives as well.

A report by Family Health Initiative (FHI) in 2001 said that women who have sexual contact with men who migrate to India for work have a higher risk of HIV infection, or contracting other STDs (Sexually Transmitted Diseases) than other women do.

Even so, it is the women who have to face discriminations from members of the society.

Sharada recalls the ill treatment she experienced after it was known that she was an HIV positive. "My family asked me to live separately," she said, her tear-filled eyes lost in the horizon. "I lived in a small room away from my house. It was horrible."

No one would come to meet her. "They behaved as if they were scared of me," she continued. "And I lived alone for many months," she added. It was then, a brother in her village told her of Maiti Nepal and brought her to Kathmandu.

And there’s Gita. At age 14, her own uncle sold her to a brothel in Pune, India. Raised in a low-income family in Nuwakot, where ends could be barely met, Gita followed him when he said that she would get a decent job in a garment factory in Kathmandu. "He took me to Pune and said it was Kathmandu, and then left me in the brothel," she recalled as she narrated her story. A year later, she was rescued by people from Maiti Nepal. She was later tested HIV positive.Like Sharada, Gita also suffered discrimination from members of the society - even from the staff at the Indra Rajya Laxmi Maternity Hospital, while delivering her baby a few weeks ago. "The staff discriminated against me saying I was an HIV."

These are just a few examples of the stigma and discrimination that women and children living with HIV/AIDS face every day.

Be it housewives or women who were trafficked, the HIV epidemic is slowly afflicting the fairer sex due in large part to ignorance, irresponsibility or ill information on sexual practises by men, say experts. "I feel angry when I think that if only my husband had been careful, then my daughters and I would not have got the virus," said Sharada.

Cases like these abound. Pramila (name changed) from Chitwan also got HIV from her husband. Now she has full-blown AIDS, and under anti-retroviral treatment. He was 42 years old when she got married with him. He worked in Calcutta.

"He used to stay away, so he must have had that urge," she said. "But it makes me angry that he did not think of our family. He died but he left us here, and now we’re paying the price."Bishwo Ram Khadka of Maiti Nepal said that stigma and discrimination attached to HIV/AIDS in the Nepali society are so intense that in most of the cases women and their children are practically driven out of their homes.

"We have four such cases at Maiti Nepal, but there are much more in the country," he said.

"Women are discriminated against by our society, and HIV/AIDS has fuelled the problem," said Indra Prasad Adhikari, Programme Officer, HIV/AIDS Programme at the Red Cross. "We need to address the issue as a social problem. Women need to be empowered."