InterPress News Service (IPS) - Friday, February 5, 1998
Nhial Bol

It said Islamic values and traditional norms were the best tools for controlling the "killer disease" which, it added, was spreading and killing people in poor rural communities -- although it did not say how and why AIDS was spreading in the countryside.

The head of Virological Unit at the national laboratory, Dr. Eassam Mohamed Al Khadir, was this week reported by the media as saying that the time had come to discuss HIV/AIDS in this nation of 27 million people.

Whether people want it or not, AIDS is killing people, Eassam told journalists here. "We cannot allow the disease to kill, let's be realistic in dealing with the matter," he said, adding that many HIV cases had gone unreported because people considered HIV/AIDS a source of shame for the family.

Al Khadir, who used to be director of the state-run National Aids Committee, said that the spread of HIV was rooted in poverty which, for example, was forcing many people to indulge in commercial sex in order to survive. He said that in 1996 alone, HIV had infected 1,990,000 people in Sudan, 40 percent of them women, and that this year the rate of infection was expected to increase in geometric progression.

One 41-year-old who is living with AIDS and whose name was given as O.M. by the 'Al Ray Al Anam' newspaper, urged others infected by the virus to speak out so as to give the society an idea of the real impact of the disease.

"I could not believe that AIDS kills people but I am a good example to tell people about the disease," the paper reported him as saying in its Monday edition. "I was infected with HIV since five years ago but the diagnosis was made late.

"When it all started, I went through pain in my body and constant fever. After that I developed stomach trouble ... I always felt as if (I) were exposed to electric shocks which in certain cases paralysed my limbs".

Later came other tell-tale symptoms such as weight loss and he became sick with worry, wondering what would happen to his wife and children after his death. "I first though of committing suicide," he recalled, "but later I had a change of heart and decided to contribute to the campaign against AIDS."

He claimed he lost his job as a public school teacher when the Ministry of Education learnt that he had been infected with HIV.

O.M. is now a member of the National AIDS Committee. He goes around campaigning for funds for supporting HIV- and AIDS patients who, he said, are shunned by their families. He alleged that people with AIDS were isolated by most Sudanese communities and thus needed the support of donors.

One young woman whose name was also withheld, said she was married but had been practising commercial sex so as to support her family until she discovered that she was infected with HIV.

"The news that I have AIDS was a great shock to me," she told the newspaper. "I decided to keep it secret so as not to be dismissed from my post but the psychological feeling has reached a point where I could not hide it."

"I was a simple official in the government but now I've lost my job because of this disease," she said. "The problem facing me is how I will feed the children."

The reported increase in HIV cases has put pressure on the health authorities to work out a national strategy against the ailment.

Parliament, for its part, is considering passing a law that would punish any HIV-positive person who practices unprotected sex, but the idea is strongly opposed by traditional and religious leaders, who say it is against their beliefs.

Deng Atheny, a parliamentarian from Southern Sudan, is among those who feel AIDS must be criminalised in order to prevent its spread. "By making laws against those who practice sex while they know they have AIDS, the lives of some people will be protected," he told IPS here.

He said any HIV-positive person who practiced unprotected sex should be put to death. (end/ips/nb/kb/98)

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