“Transfer the Knowledge”
The Meeting in Chennai was the greatest experience I ever had in my life, so with my whole heart I thank all the people who gave me support for going to the meeting.
The Theme of the meeting was “Transfer the Knowledge.” The participants were from all over the world, so I had the great opportunity to meet them, ask questions and interact with them.
The Participants: The participants were from all over the world, so here I will introduce some of them who came to give the presentations in the different sessions I attended.
1. Dr. Premashwary: she is a doctor in medical collage in Chennai, and is the head of the department of AIDS. She came and presented a paper about her experience in the field of experimentation with AIDS patients and its control. She explained the way that it is all about making awareness to the people about AIDS and its effect. She said that many people are not aware of the danger that AIDS is to their life, and her department is working hard in that field to make people aware, so that she sends students to different parts of Tamil Nadu for awareness classes . Then she was speaking of the experiment she did with the patient who came to her for treatment. She said mainly that AIDS is spreading from mother to child, so if we are careful we can control it. There are some medicines for this on market, but at a very high cost, which a simple family is not able to pay for, but there are government agencies and some NGO’s that are helping to get medication to those who are in need of it. It is also not a sure thing that the medicine will prevent the sickness, but some give good results. But in some cases they fail, so all they can do is try. She then she spoke of the different medicine and their usage, costs, etc .
2. Dr. Siripon: Dr. Siripon, a doctor who lives in Thailand, also presented a paper in the meeting explaining the conditions and situations of AIDS patients in Thailand. She explained that 8,000 babies every year get AIDS from their mothers, so now they also are trying to control the spreading of AIDS through mother to child, but as we all know, more awareness is needed in this area and the government is doing a great thing in that field. Some NGO’s also work hard on this issue, and so far, they have good results. They have the problem of prostitution which causes a lot of AIDS, but now people know the danger of the sickness. She also described the methods they use for the treatment of patients, and some of the names of the medicines they use.
3. Dr. Jennifer Read: She is a doctor in the U S A. She spoke about the improvements that America has made in the field of AIDS prevention from mother to child; she said that there is no child in America born of AIDS now because the parents are told before conception or during conception how to be careful, and what are the ways and medicine to take, so now the government of America is also spending lot of money for the prevention of AIDS. Many NGO’s and other agencies and social workers are working in this field, so they have a positive result, but it is all trial and experiment. Some are successful and others fail. She also explained the methods and medicines they use for patients.
4. Dr. Kristi: Dr. Kristi is from Estonia , a country in the North East of Europe. She explained that in her country they have many people with AIDS, and now the government is aware of it, and is starting to do some thing about it, but they have not yet archived much in the field.
5. Dr. Selman Sahib: is from Bangladesh, he described the ways AIDS is spreading there. He said that injection of drugs, sex , mother to child transmission, and prostitution were the main causes, and that people are aware of the dangers, but still take risks and some even don’t bother, so AIDS is spreading. He also explained the methods and medicines they are using.
Still there were more presentations in this section, and all of them spoke of their country’s progress and methods they are using for the prevention of AIDS.
The Meeting in Chennai was the greatest experience I ever had in my life, so with my whole heart I thank all the people who gave me support for going to the meeting.
The Theme of the meeting was “Transfer the Knowledge.” The participants were from all over the world, so I had the great opportunity to meet them, ask questions and interact with them.
The Participants: The participants were from all over the world, so here I will introduce some of them who came to give the presentations in the different sessions I attended.
1. Dr. Premashwary: she is a doctor in medical collage in Chennai, and is the head of the department of AIDS. She came and presented a paper about her experience in the field of experimentation with AIDS patients and its control. She explained the way that it is all about making awareness to the people about AIDS and its effect. She said that many people are not aware of the danger that AIDS is to their life, and her department is working hard in that field to make people aware, so that she sends students to different parts of Tamil Nadu for awareness classes . Then she was speaking of the experiment she did with the patient who came to her for treatment. She said mainly that AIDS is spreading from mother to child, so if we are careful we can control it. There are some medicines for this on market, but at a very high cost, which a simple family is not able to pay for, but there are government agencies and some NGO’s that are helping to get medication to those who are in need of it. It is also not a sure thing that the medicine will prevent the sickness, but some give good results. But in some cases they fail, so all they can do is try. She then she spoke of the different medicine and their usage, costs, etc .
2. Dr. Siripon: Dr. Siripon, a doctor who lives in Thailand, also presented a paper in the meeting explaining the conditions and situations of AIDS patients in Thailand. She explained that 8,000 babies every year get AIDS from their mothers, so now they also are trying to control the spreading of AIDS through mother to child, but as we all know, more awareness is needed in this area and the government is doing a great thing in that field. Some NGO’s also work hard on this issue, and so far, they have good results. They have the problem of prostitution which causes a lot of AIDS, but now people know the danger of the sickness. She also described the methods they use for the treatment of patients, and some of the names of the medicines they use.
3. Dr. Jennifer Read: She is a doctor in the U S A. She spoke about the improvements that America has made in the field of AIDS prevention from mother to child; she said that there is no child in America born of AIDS now because the parents are told before conception or during conception how to be careful, and what are the ways and medicine to take, so now the government of America is also spending lot of money for the prevention of AIDS. Many NGO’s and other agencies and social workers are working in this field, so they have a positive result, but it is all trial and experiment. Some are successful and others fail. She also explained the methods and medicines they use for patients.
4. Dr. Kristi: Dr. Kristi is from Estonia , a country in the North East of Europe. She explained that in her country they have many people with AIDS, and now the government is aware of it, and is starting to do some thing about it, but they have not yet archived much in the field.
5. Dr. Selman Sahib: is from Bangladesh, he described the ways AIDS is spreading there. He said that injection of drugs, sex , mother to child transmission, and prostitution were the main causes, and that people are aware of the dangers, but still take risks and some even don’t bother, so AIDS is spreading. He also explained the methods and medicines they are using.
Still there were more presentations in this section, and all of them spoke of their country’s progress and methods they are using for the prevention of AIDS.
AIDS Patients:
Now I would like to tell you about some people who have AIDS, who spoke of their struggles and problems that they are facing in society, from family and even from Priests and Religious etc.
Mr. Paul: Paul is an AIDS patient for the last 7 years. He got AIDS while having sex with another woman, and it was a forced sex, and he was innocent, but the result was that he got AIDS and now he is out of the family, and his own people even in the Church are asking him to stay away since they came to know that he was a AIDS patient. His story is that when family and friends came to know that he was having the sickness they directly asked him to go away and the community also rejected him, so he approached the Parish Priest and Sisters, but all said they can’t help him, so he came to Chennai where the medical collage is giving help for AIDS patients. He is now a volunteer for the prevention of AIDS.
Miss Swapana: She is from Tamil Nadu and got AIDS from her relative who raped her when her parents were away. Now she is at a help shelter and is doing awareness programs for other people and families. She is a graduate and knows English, but when her family and others came to know that she has AIDS, they send her away, and asked her to never return.
Miss Renuka: from Kerala, got AIDS while receiving blood from a government hospital. She has been rejected by everyone. She is still suffering. She lost her job, any nobody is ready to give any help or give her a job. She is also a post-graduate. An agency came forward to help her, and now she receives medicines and other necessities.
Miss Muri: She is from Tamil Nadu, is a Higida, and she was also force to do sex with others. And when she got AIDS she was sent out by her community by her relatives. Miss Muri was working for a private company and they sent her away, so she started an agency for people with AIDS, people who are out of their homes, and are having problems. She is a full time worker, and got several chances go around India to witness the suffering of people with AIDS. Now she is the head of between 30 to 50 people who work for AIDS patients, giving direction and advice to people. Several doctors, social workers and medical people work in the agency with her. Even though she doesn’t know English, it did not cause a problem for her to convey her message. The participants of the conference gave her a big applause of appreciation. I had great chance to meet her and talk to her personally, and she was telling me that when all of us were applauding her success story, she was thinking of before, when she was suffering everything alone; going through it was so terrible that sometimes she thought to end her life. God alone gave her the strength to go on and be successful.
There are still many other life stories of suffering people, but to tell all of their stories is difficult, so now I will go to another part:
NGO’s in the field of AIDS: There are many NGO’s that work for people with AIDS, and are making people aware of the disease.
SHENKHA: is an agency which is working for street children in Chennai. An interesting thing is that when they found that most of the children who are under their care are HIV positive, they had to look for treatment for these children, and find medicine and provide special care. Now SHENKHA is an agency for AIDS patients, and children who are helpless and suffering.
Care and Share: This is also an agency that is working for street children, but the need of care for the AIDS children changed their policies. Now they work primarily for children with AIDS.
Now I want to tell to a life story about a child who happened to be living on the street, and what he had to face in his life until now. Santosh is the first born son in the family. The father was a drunkard and always caused family fights. One day Santosh ran away from home and got a train to Chennai. He knew nobody, and having no food, he started to beg. Someone gave him money, but the other children took it away from him, and he was hungry. During the night, two men came to him and made him do all kinds of sex activity until the morning, so that in the morning he was not able to get up for anything. But some children helped him and gave him some food, inviting him to be in their company. He did some work at the railway station, but the night program continued until he was in the streets for six months. He had some friends who would fight with him, so then he started other relationships, he went to other boys to do the same and then went to women for sex in the night. As he was reaching 14 years old, we all know that it cost him his life because now he is an AIDS patient and so sick, but so lovely a boy, but the doctors said that he will live in this condition maybe for one more year. He says that those who are on the street all do the same as he did, smoking, drinking, going with other men or women for sex, and many are have sexually transmitted diseases.
South Indian Positive Network: It is also an agency where they are trying to bring all the AIDS patients together for treatment, and sharing their work together, helping each other come out of their problems.
N A C P III e–consultation: This is an agency that works for AIDS patients. They give out information about AIDS, and offer guidelines. They do this through Email. They say that it is so much easier to work with email than by talking to people directly. But they still do help people who come to them, and give all the help they can. They have two kinds of knowledgeable people, one kind are experts, and the other ones are those who have experience with serving people.
Then there were presentations about the different medicines that are used for the experiments to prevent the sickness. They are Allopathic, Arvada , and Homeopathic. All of their different ways of treating patients were presented, and the positive as well as negative results from their treatments.
Now I would like to portray the discussion about the role and response of religion towards AIDS and people with AIDS.
Christians: Whatever we say, nobody can deny the works that Catholics, and others, in response to AIDS and people with AIDS, but on a whole we are doing nothing because only few are doing anything. Some run houses for AIDS people or hospitals etc., but the majority of Religious and Priests are not even speaking about AIDS and its problems. While the government agencies are supporting condoms, the Church is silent. Even when some Priests say something, others discourage it. Now it is the time for the Church to respond when a lot of people are suffering with AIDS. There was a time when leprosy was a common sickness, and people thought that it was because of sin. But realty was different, and with the help of the people of the Church, the sickness was wiped away. So now it is time for the Church to awaken to this sickness and respond together to prevent it. Then people gave some examples, describing the deeds of some Priests and Religious toward people with AIDS, where religious people said that normal men and women will not do what they did, many shouting badly at those people with AIDS, even when they were not present.
Hindu: Although there was work done by different people in the name of religion, they don’t have the works as we do, but some good minded people who have money do charitable works. Many from the Hindu religion do far more work than any religion, even though they have family and children to take care of. So there came the question, why do these people offer their life for service, but do their own things only?
Muslims: There was a presentation about Muslims, that they don’t have any specific work, as we do, but many people are generous and do a lot, but in secret. We, the Catholics, publicize what we do.
Reflections: When I look at the meeting as a whole, and what I learned from it, it gives me a lot of happiness and joy in my heart, because the meeting was international and so many people participated. They were not simple people, but all were from high class or middle class, so the personal conversations even when they were difficult, were so official. There were no arguments or problems with each other. Everyone respected each other’s freedom and dignity. This was so nice an experience for me. There were around 1,500 participants. Everything was well arranged, and from morning to night everyone was attentive to the conferences and interactions. Then, all were from the background of medicine and social work, so there was always a mutual understanding between one another. From all this, what I learned was how to be an official, and be simple. There was a lot of information about the medicine they use for treatment, and the sharing of life experiences of doctors, priests, sisters, lay people , social workers working with people with AIDS. And there were the sad stories of the AIDS patients with the negative, hurtful, reactions by their families and society, and even their religious leaders.
We all have to accept that people with AIDS are also human beings, and that they have the right to live on this earth as every other human being does.
Once again I say thanks to all those who supported me and gave me the chance to go to the conference and experience, especially to the District Council, Fr Martin, Br. Lenny, and Fr. Sebastin. Thanks a lot!, and God bless us all.
Let us do something for these suffering people.
Br. Xavier Viju, SCJ
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