|
Saturday, February 15, 2003
Editorial: Happy Valentine to our HIV/AIDS positive brethren
TODAY, February 14, is Valentine's Day. A day for both lovers and loved ones - friends, family members and just anyone we feel drawn to with special affection or concern on this day.
Call it coincidence or intended, but yesterday and today, the Aids Society of the Philippines is conducting a workshop on HIV/AIDS reporting at the Audio Visual Room of the West Visayas State University in Lapaz, Iloilo City.
The asking message was whether or not they can be loved as much as normal people. And the answer was: Yes!
It was established by resource persons from the medical community in yesterday morning's interaction that HIV/AIDS positive people are as normal as the "really normal" ones.
And it behooves us, the discussion urged, to recognize that they still deserve their usual place with us - at home, in school, in the office and anywhere else - without being discriminated or made to appear fearsome as the lepers of old.
Doctors, acting as resource persons in that interaction, stressed that there really is nothing to fear in their company.
They said HIV, the virus causing AIDS, may be transferred only through unprotected sex, infected blood transfusion, and by an HIV/AIDS positive pregnant mother to her baby.
Otherwise, they are not transmissible, that is, even with the use of their food utensils and the common CR bowl. It cannot even be transferred by mosquito bite.
In other words, we, "really normal" ones, can use their plates, spoons, forks, and drinking glasses, as well as exchange pleasantries with them face to face.
And even kiss them lips to lips! Mau (Maureen) an HIV/AIDS positive, who joined the interaction, explained that HIV may be transmitted only from 8 gallons of saliva.
"You would be kissing the whole day and still not get HIV!" she mused and broke into a hearty laugh.
Indeed, that's a relief. Because that means we need not be so cautious about anyone we are not so sure to be HIV/AIDS negative.
Whether or not a person is HIV/AIDS positive, it was observed, cannot be determined from his or her looks or ways, for he or she can even look very healthy. It may only be determined, the doctors stressed, through a laboratory test conducted by an expert in the field.
Moving sprightly and chirping like a bird, despite her being AIDS positive, Mau said she learned she has HIV in 1994. She was only 18 then, she recalled. She said she is very much in love with her husband who married her despite knowing she has AIDS.
Soon enough, after that interaction that lasted until lunchtime, the skeptical among the participants started to demonstrate their newly learned verity. Some clasped her hands, as if to say "welcome back to normal society." Some talked with her for as long as it takes. And exchanged pleasantries with her like she is just one of them "really normal" beings, despite having contracted the dreaded illness that gradually weakens one's body defenses until one finally yields and die even from a simple cold. Death from AIDS, according to doctors, may take place shortly after contracting it to about 10 years later.
Happy Valentine to you Mau, and the rest of the 1,796 other HIV/AIDS positive persons in the country, close to 300 of whom have already died.
We love you just like everybody else among our family members and friends.
And be happy, especially in the thought that you are better off than most of us who, unlike you, are not as serious about dying and likely to be less cautious about their spiritual lives - thinking nothing seems the matter with them at present, forgetting that "death is like a thief in the night that comes when one is sound asleep."
Of course, before we forget, we also extend to everybody else the same greeting: Happy Valentine!
(February 14, 2003 issue)
Want Sun.Star news on your mobile phone? Click here. |
|
[ return
to top ]
[ home
]
|
LOCAL NEWS
BUSINESS
OPINION
SPORTS
LIFESTYLE
FEATURE
|
