Sorrow, Confusion for Villagers Who Test Positive for HIV

Khmer Times/Taing Vida

Monday, 22 February 2016

Peam residents gather for blood tests in Muk Kampoul district of Kandal Province. 14 villagers tested positive for the virus that causes AIDS earlier this month. KT/Chor Sokunthea

More than 200 villagers from Peam village, young and old, came to the village chief’s house yesterday to do blood tests for HIV. Four tested positive for the virus that causes AIDS, but uncertainty remains about the total number of villagers with the disease.
 

The mass HIV test by the Ministry of Health was requested by local authorities after a blood test on February 6 by officials from Samdech Ouv Hospital found that 14 of the villagers were carrying HIV. Some of the people who have tested positive in yesterday’s tests recounted feelings of shame and fear, and said they were worried about being shunned by their neighbors because of a disease that is often stigmatized and little-understood.
 

One of two HIV-positive women shows her arm after a blood test at her home in Peam village. KT/Chor Sokunthea

Ms. Chenda, a 65-year-old woman living in the village, said she was hiding in her house to avoid contact with villagers and to conceal the fact that she has tested positive for HIV.
 

A pale and exhausted Ms. Chenda said that she could not believe that she was HIV positive, since she had not had a sexual partner since 1979. “I’m an old single woman, and since the falling of the Khmer Rouge regime, I haven’t had a husband,” she said. “Why am I HIV positive? I was afraid to catch the disease, that’s why I choose not to get married. But I couldn’t avoid it.”
 

She said that she suspects she caught it when she visited the hospital five or six years ago for treatment for diarrhea. She said she received medical injections at the hospital, and afterward, her health fell into decline. “I almost collapsed after hearing that I was an HIV positive after this blood test,” she said. “Since I’m alone, I’m worried about what’s going to happen to me.”
 

“When I first learned I had HIV,” she said, “I had no courage to tell people, because it was too shameful. I only told people about it after the villagers found out that there were many HIV positive people in this village.”
 

Ms. Mom, a 65-year-old woman with skin and teeth darkened by betel, said she has lived as a widow since the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime. Nevertheless, she too tested positive for HIV. She said that she may have caught the virus from the medical injections she received at the hospital for chronic headaches and fever.
 

“My tears fell instantly when the result from my blood test told me that I was HIV positive,” she said. “I have lived alone as a widow and I have thought only about going to the temple. I never wanted to do anything outside the law of chastity. If I had been getting married before, it should be the reason that I was infected by my husband. But, why am I sick now? Maybe the government can investigate to find out the truth.” She added that she was afraid the disease would make the other villagers hate her.
 

Wiping away her tears, Ms. Mom recounted that she has not been able to sleep since finding out that she was HIV positive. “May this disease happen only to a few of us,” she said. “May it not happen to the children.”
 

Dr. Ly Penh Sun, director of the National Centre for HIV/AIDS, Dermatology and STD Control (NCHADS), said that 279 people had been tested by yesterday afternoon, and said that the rates of HIV in the tests were not above national averages.
 

“Such a rate of HIV is the same as anywhere else,” he said, adding that the case was not like the HIV outbreak in Roka Village, where hundreds of villagers are believed to have contracted HIV when a local unlicensed doctor used the same medical equipment on multiple patients.
 

After only four people tested positive in yesterday’s tests, some people have begun to question the results of the February 6 tests by doctors from Samdech Ouv Hospital, which found 14 people HIV-positive. “I don’t know where they got that statistic from,” said Mrs. Sambo.
 

Cambodia has received recognition for its success in fighting the spread of HIV, which has gone from infecting 1.6 percent of Cambodians aged 15-49 to just 0.7 percent as of 2012.
 

The Peam residents who tested positive for the disease said they are counting on the government to provide the medication needed to fight the side effects of AIDs. “I don’t know yet what my situation will be in the future,” said Ms. Chenda, “I don’t know if the government will continue to provide us the antiretroviral drug to help us live longer, or if we will only live for a very short time.”
 

All victims’ names were changed.