When having HIV is a crime! By Venansio Ahabwe

[Guest guest]

When having HIV is a crime!

By Venansio Ahabwe

1st November 2009

Some diseases can cause great distress and embarrassment to their sufferers. A

person, who is facing a health problem, becomes an object of laughter and is

blamed both for their state of health and presumed role in bringing about the

adverse situation. Incidentally, most diseases are transmittable, whereby the

most effective way to control their spread is to set up barriers between the

sufferers and those not yet infected.

The indirect logic is: If you are suffering from a disease, you got it from

someone who also had acquired it from another, who had too got it from another …

and so forth. It becomes a vicious cycle of infection and transmission,

culminating into a cycle of shame, blame and laughter.

Eventually, everyone should laugh at everyone else accusing and blaming them for

the health problems afflicting society. The entire public is thus responsible

for every illness afflicting any particular individual.

The Comrade remembers a time in childhood when a syndrome known as mumps was

common, and often educed laughter.

This disease leads to the swelling of a person's cheeks, giving them an

interesting look. We called such people `cats' on the account of their

round-shaped swollen cheeks. As a child, you could only squeak under suppressed

laughter at the sight of a person suffering from mumps; for to burst into

obvious laughter was equivalent to inviting the same disease to attack you.

It was believed that every mumps sufferer had laughed at someone else suffering

from it. Yet it is self-limited disease, running its course before receding,

with no specific treatment.

But caretakers of sick children would smear the kids' faces with black soot to

ensure that whoever met them laughed and thus carried away the disease. Ideally,

the disease could end if people stopped laughing at others suffering from it.

Apart from avoiding the disease through suppressing one's laughter, it was and

is also inhuman to derive amusement from another person's suffering.

The irony, though, was that mumps patients liked to be laughed at loudly rather

than mere chuckles as a cure for the ailment for, in due course, the laugher

carried the disease. In the final analysis, both the sufferer and the healthy

folks share a destiny.

For some reason, mumps is a rare disease nowadays, so children and adults have

fewer and fewer people to laugh at and blame for their poor health.

A laughable sickness today seems to be HIV/Aids. It is a life-threatening

illness that should arouse empathy and compassion, but it is largely regarded as

a sign of a person's wicked lifestyle; a self-inflicted form of suffering. Aids

sufferers are at times regarded as perverted and dangerous humans that merit

punishment from God and man.

Only last month, a 44 year-old Ugandan man, in Australia, was handed a 10-year

jail sentence for infecting a partner with HIV.

The guy has lived with the ailment for long and purportedly knew his status

since 1993. After an affair with a Sudanese refugee, it emerged that he infected

her with HIV in 2007 and has now been punished.

AIDS sufferers, unlike mumps victims, are not merely chuckled at. Individuals

and communities find it easy to tease them openly about their sickness without

the fear inviting the same health condition on themselves.

HIV and Aids are seen as proof that the individual has had sexual intercourse –

usually in hiding. The person's has not only failed to abstain from sex, their

lack of sexual faithfulness or abiding to safer sex standards is evident.

People who are known to be infected with HIV are generally branded and condemned

in homes, places of worship, workplaces and markets.

They might be regarded as dangerous characters that can infect whole communities

and exterminate nations. The case of Zebtek Wepukhulu, convicted in Australia,

is unique; it shows that HIV is not a laughing matter. A patient can be

condemned through court!

Venansio Ahabwe is a regional commentator on social, political and economic

issues based in Kampala.

SOURCE: GUARDIAN ON SUNDAY

[Guest guest]

When having HIV is a crime!

By Venansio Ahabwe

1st November 2009

Some diseases can cause great distress and embarrassment to their sufferers. A

person, who is facing a health problem, becomes an object of laughter and is

blamed both for their state of health and presumed role in bringing about the

adverse situation. Incidentally, most diseases are transmittable, whereby the

most effective way to control their spread is to set up barriers between the

sufferers and those not yet infected.

The indirect logic is: If you are suffering from a disease, you got it from

someone who also had acquired it from another, who had too got it from another …

and so forth. It becomes a vicious cycle of infection and transmission,

culminating into a cycle of shame, blame and laughter.

Eventually, everyone should laugh at everyone else accusing and blaming them for

the health problems afflicting society. The entire public is thus responsible

for every illness afflicting any particular individual.

The Comrade remembers a time in childhood when a syndrome known as mumps was

common, and often educed laughter.

This disease leads to the swelling of a person's cheeks, giving them an

interesting look. We called such people `cats' on the account of their

round-shaped swollen cheeks. As a child, you could only squeak under suppressed

laughter at the sight of a person suffering from mumps; for to burst into

obvious laughter was equivalent to inviting the same disease to attack you.

It was believed that every mumps sufferer had laughed at someone else suffering

from it. Yet it is self-limited disease, running its course before receding,

with no specific treatment.

But caretakers of sick children would smear the kids' faces with black soot to

ensure that whoever met them laughed and thus carried away the disease. Ideally,

the disease could end if people stopped laughing at others suffering from it.

Apart from avoiding the disease through suppressing one's laughter, it was and

is also inhuman to derive amusement from another person's suffering.

The irony, though, was that mumps patients liked to be laughed at loudly rather

than mere chuckles as a cure for the ailment for, in due course, the laugher

carried the disease. In the final analysis, both the sufferer and the healthy

folks share a destiny.

For some reason, mumps is a rare disease nowadays, so children and adults have

fewer and fewer people to laugh at and blame for their poor health.

A laughable sickness today seems to be HIV/Aids. It is a life-threatening

illness that should arouse empathy and compassion, but it is largely regarded as

a sign of a person's wicked lifestyle; a self-inflicted form of suffering. Aids

sufferers are at times regarded as perverted and dangerous humans that merit

punishment from God and man.

Only last month, a 44 year-old Ugandan man, in Australia, was handed a 10-year

jail sentence for infecting a partner with HIV.

The guy has lived with the ailment for long and purportedly knew his status

since 1993. After an affair with a Sudanese refugee, it emerged that he infected

her with HIV in 2007 and has now been punished.

AIDS sufferers, unlike mumps victims, are not merely chuckled at. Individuals

and communities find it easy to tease them openly about their sickness without

the fear inviting the same health condition on themselves.

HIV and Aids are seen as proof that the individual has had sexual intercourse –

usually in hiding. The person's has not only failed to abstain from sex, their

lack of sexual faithfulness or abiding to safer sex standards is evident.

People who are known to be infected with HIV are generally branded and condemned

in homes, places of worship, workplaces and markets.

They might be regarded as dangerous characters that can infect whole communities

and exterminate nations. The case of Zebtek Wepukhulu, convicted in Australia,

is unique; it shows that HIV is not a laughing matter. A patient can be

condemned through court!

Venansio Ahabwe is a regional commentator on social, political and economic

issues based in Kampala.

SOURCE: GUARDIAN ON SUNDAY