THE sad story of a young HIV-positive mother’s experience, as related by her mother in our AllWoman publication yesterday, is proof that there still exists a fair degree of ignorance about HIV/AIDS in the country.

Thirty-one-year-old Olivia was subjected to the most humiliating and dehumanising existence before she died from complications associated with HIV/AIDS in July this year.

According to her mother, after it became evident that Olivia had been infected — most likely by the father of one of her three children who had confessed to his status a couple of weeks before he died — she became the object of scorn and ridicule in her community.

“…She suddenly became like a movie star in the community, the only difference being that she was not looked on because she was admired but was a target of ridicule. She was afraid of leaving her home as she had became an outcast,” the article quoted Olivia’s mother.

The scorn, we were told, extended beyond Olivia’s community, as she had difficulty accessing public transportation because some drivers refused to carry her and some passengers avoided sitting close to her.

Unfortunately, the ridicule didn’t stop at Olivia, as her 12-year-old daughter was picked on at school by other children.

“I was always teased about how my mother had AIDS and some of my friends were no longer talking to me as they said I, too, was positive as me and my mother were living in the same household,” the little girl told us.

While we can understand the level of ignorance about HIV/AIDS among large sections of the public, we cannot accept the attitude of some health care providers to people with this disease.

Olivia — going by her mother’s account — met one such doctor while she was in hospital. The painful experience, she said, led her to the belief that had her daughter been afflicted with diabetes, cancer or any other disease that was not sex-related, the doctor would have dealt with her in a more humane manner.

That HIV-positive persons are still being discriminated against by doctors and nurses was confirmed by Mr Ainsley Reid, a United Nations volunteer who has been living with HIV for the past 18 years.

To say that we are disappointed at the charges made by Mr Reid and Olivia’s mother would be putting it mildly. The fact is that doctors and nurses are highly trained professionals who, more than most other people, are aware of how HIV/AIDS is transmitted, and as such should not be the ones to subject infected individuals to discrimination.

We suspect, though, that those guilty of doing so are really in the minority. But, as Mr Reid correctly states, “it should not be like that”.

We have also had cause in the past to express our disappointment at the way in which some members of the clergy and their flock treat persons who have died from HIV/AIDS and their relatives.

It is shameful, to say the least, that people who profess to follow Christ’s example of love and forgiveness would shun people because of their HIV status, as did Olivia’s pastor to whom her mother turned to make funeral arrangements after Olivia’s passing.

What is clear is that the health ministry, state agencies and non-governmental organisations that have been expending a great deal of time, effort and resources on public education about HIV/AIDS need to do a lot more if we are to see a drastic reduction in the stigma associated with this illness.

Failure is too great a price to pay on this issue, because the stigma, if left unchecked, will continue HIV’s silent devastation of our society.