Schoolboy rejected by school over HIV suspicion

Kuliyapitiya child minus school .... 

over suspicion of HIV infection!

The term HIV has been subjected to misinterpretation among the public in certain areas in Sri Lanka. An unfortunate incident is heard from Kuliyapitiya of a case of a child being deprived of a school for this very reason. This story was revealed for the first time when a mother of two children

living in a village a short distance beyond Kuliyapitiya town had come with her 6 year old son and had staged a protest, seated in front of the gate of Kuliyapitiya Education office.

Three months before this a rumour had spread around that her husband passed away as a result of having suffered from AIDS. She says that because of this rumour she had to face humiliation by society in this manner. "A false rumour circulated around the village that my husband died after suffering from AIDS. With that news the people in the village 'cornered' us. Even at the Montessori this child was attending, these misgivings were to be seen. Later the teacher at the Montessori mediated in this matter and spoke to the MOH office and took steps to check blood samples of my son. What is stated very  clearly in the child's blood report is that the child is not HIV infected. That was not successful enough to put a stop to this story spreading around or to stop this rumour going round. When I tried to get admission for my child after the Montessori, none of those schools were willing to get him admitted. Like this I went to about 10 schools. It was when I could do nothing more that I came to Kuliyapitiya Zonal office. Whenever I stepped into the Zonal office I was found fault with ... and was insulted".

What Saman Wijeysekera the Deputy Zonal Director of the Kuliyapitiya Zonal Education office says is that because of the story that is going round in society that this child is HIV infected, the child cannot be found a school in the zone. The solution he brings forward is for the child to be admitted to some other school outside the Kuliyapitiya Education Zone.

The mother of the child says that she has no financial strength to rent out a house away from the house where she now resides and to proceed with the child's educational activities while simultaneously attending to other expenses. The poverty-stricken existence of this family is portrayed by the fact that they have been called upon to eke out their living in a house which is half-constructed with bricks and is thatched with coconut leaves and the house which is still not plastered either; which itself provides ample evidence of their present financial plight.

Dr. N.R. Amarajeewa, Chief of the Sexual Diseases Unit of Puttalam District mentions the idea that since it is an HIV Virus just as much it cannot spread across the air, it does not infect a human being simply by normal confrontations, through touch or by intermingling at the place of work, school or village. He further points out that the possibility of this virus spreading towards another person could be assumed in cases when there is unsafe sexual relationships, blood transfusion, using injection needles not sterilized and when a baby is breast fed by a mother who is infected.