The international site of the Daughters of Charity has an abstract of the testimony shared by Sr. Adelfa Siega (Province of Thailand) during the XVth International HIV-AIDS Conference (July 11-16, 2004, Bangkok, Thailand) upon the request of the organizing committee. Together with Sr. Adelfa, Namtan, a Thai child, also shared the testimony.”…the Sister in charge of the program discovered that there was a small group of elderly persons who were painfully suffering due to HIV/AIDS. Their children had gone to the big cities to earn their living since they harvested rice only once a year. When they came back to the village, they were afflicted with HIV/AIDS. This caused much pain and suffering to their elderly parents. Up until that time, the elderly persons’ children and grandchildren who got infected with the HIV/AIDS virus had no access to the anti-viral medicine and so many of them died. So great were the fear, the stigma and the discrimination surrounding persons with HIV/AIDS that the orphaned children were not accepted in school and the youth could not find jobs once they were known that they came from an HIV/AIDS infected family. The elderly also had great fears about being infected themselves while caring for their sick members. And all these, the elderly suffered in silence.
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Tags: Health
