Discrimination of children infected with HIV is the saddest stigma on HIV/AIDS patients, Wayne Weibel -- USAID’s Senior HIV Prevention and Drug Rehab Technical Advisor -- shares on World AIDS Day. Tuoitrenews would like to quote an excerpt from an interview with him.

I’ve been here about two and a half years. I work for the US Agency for International Development to help set up programs for HIV prevention, targeting drugs injected all over Asia.

Discrimination is an ongoing issue in relation to HIV/AIDS. But it’s also a very difficult problem to address. One common discrimination is against people who are engaged in activities where HIV is transmitted. There’s a lot of discrimination against drug users, commercial sex, sex workers and men who have sex with men.

As long as a member of the public knows that they’re not at risk of getting themselves infected, the source of the stigma tends to drop. People are worried that they may get infected if they meet somebody with HIV and shake their hands. And once they learn they’re not, then there’s not much of a problem in relation to that. One of the things we are concerned about doing is getting people to turn their life around, get off of drugs, and get HIV antiretroviral medication so they’re healthy and have a high quality of life. We try to make sure those people are welcomed back in the community and reintegrated. And that’s where we need to be concerned, so that they’re not discriminated again.

Among the types of discrimination, the saddest situation is the stigma against children infected with HIV when they get into school. This stems from the fact that parents are afraid their children might get infected if somebody in the classroom has HIV.

If we can educate those parents so they know that their children are not at risk, as well as assure them that there’s no way that they can get HIV from somebody in the classroom, those children will probably be integrated into the school system and that’s something we’ve been very successful with in US. Fifteen years ago there was a young boy named Ryan White in Kokomo, Indiana that became a huge case. Though doctors said he posed no risk to other students, AIDS was poorly understood at the time, and when White tried to return to school, many parents and teachers in Kokomo rallied against his attendance. A lengthy legal battle with the school system ensued, and media coverage of the case turned White into a national celebrity and spokesman for AIDS research and public education.

Once you’re on medication, the virus in your body is slowly deteriorated. So if somebody is on medication, they can’t transmit HIV. It’s important for people to know that. Any patient on antiretroviral treatment is not capable of transmitting to somebody else if they’ve been on it long enough to eliminate the virus from their system.

For children who are not infected with HIV, they learn from their parents and from school, they’re not born with any opinion about HIV. When they learn these things, they learn that HIV is something they don’t want. When they’re old enough, they can begin their sexual life. If they don’t want HIV they may delay having sex or always make sure to use a condom to protect themselves. If parents and schools learn how HIV transmitted, they will know their children are not at risk, and there will be no reason not to allow them in the classroom.

For children with HIV, we often visit orphanages with HIV positive kids and bring them gifts. You see them and you never know they have HIV. They’re running around, they’re having fun, they’re like normal kids. If they’re on medication, they’re not sick. There’s no difference between HIV-infected children on medication and normal kids.

We want to keep HIV awareness high. If you start to forget there is a problem out there, you start to forget you need to do something about it. So AIDS Day is a good time to remember, to reflect how far we have come along, how much better the situation is today than two or five years ago. We now have medication that can save people, and people are mobilized to work together to address this problem. World AIDS Day may help us to move forward and do good work.