AIDS victims 'buried alive' in PNG

[Guest guest]

http://news./s/afp/20070827/wl_asia_afp/healthaidspng_0708271

21945

AIDS victims 'buried alive' in PNG

1 hour, 41 minutes ago

PORT MORESBY (AFP) - Some AIDS victims are being buried alive in

Papua New Guinea by relatives who cannot look after them and fear

becoming infected themselves, a health worker said Monday.

Margaret Marabe, who spent five months carrying out an AIDS awareness

campaign in the remote Southern Highlands of the South Pacific

nation, said she had seen five people buried while still breathing.

One was calling out " Mama, Mama " as the soil was shoveled over his

head, said Marabe, who works for a volunteer organisation called Igat

Hope, Pidgin English for I've Got Hope.

" One of them was my cousin, who was buried alive, " she told reporters.

" I said, 'Why are they doing that?' And they said, 'If we let them

live, stay in the same house, eat together and use or share utensils,

we will contract the disease and we too might die.' "

Villagers had told her it was common for people to bury AIDS victims

alive.

Marabe appealed to the government and aid agencies to ensure the

HIV/AIDS awareness programme carried out in cities and towns was

extended to the rural areas, where ignorance about the disease is

widespread.

Women accused of being witches have been tortured and murdered by

mobs holding them responsible for the apparently inexplicable deaths

of young people stricken by the epidemic, officials and researchers

say.

A recent United Nations report said PNG was facing an AIDS

catastrophe, accounting for 90 percent of HIV infections in the

Oceania region.

HIV diagnoses had risen by around 30 percent a year since 1997,

leaving an estimated 60,000 people living with the disease in 2005.