Caritas In Tiny Church Supports People Living With HIV/AIDS

Posted: 7th October 2007

SIEM REAP (UCAN) -- Caritas Cambodia is caring for and empowering people living with HIV/AIDS in a country that has the highest infection rate in Southeast Asia.

Since launching this ministry in 2001, the Catholic social service agency has supported more than 1,400 infected people throughout the country. Almost all of them are Buddhists, as are about 90 percent of Cambodia's estimated 14 million citizens. The country has about 19,000 Catholics.

Ministry to people with HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus that usually leads to AIDS, is a major part of the Community Health Program of Caritas. The program runs in two major towns, Siem Reap and Kompong Thom, and it will also begin operating in Battambang next year.

Caritas workers distribute food, medicine and money for travel expenses to people with HIV/AIDS, and guide and help them obtain training in vocational skills. Members of the staff also provide counseling on family life as well as psychological and sexual matters.

UCA News spoke with some Caritas beneficiaries in Siem Reap, 230 kilometers northwest of Phnom Penh, when Church workers visited them in their homes.

Hun Ly, a 44-year-old hunchbacked mother of three, greeted the visitors with a warm smile. "I've had HIV since my third 'husband' infected me in 2002," she said. As tears rolled down her cheeks, Ly explained that different men raped her on three occasions, and all of them then abandoned her.

Every month, Caritas gives her anti-retroviral drugs and 30 kilograms of rice, and New Hope Organization, an NGO with which Caritas works closely, also provides other medications and US$30 a month for basic necessities. "I'm happy and I want to live longer," Ly said. "People are now paying attention to me."

Vann Ngek, a mother of two, recalled feeling shocked, upset and hopeless when she learned in 2005 that she had contracted HIV from her husband. Caritas provides her with counseling, nutrition and health care, Ngek said. "Now, I have good health and live with hope, without feeling discriminated against."

Church workers give moral strength to Kim Somari, in her 40s, when they go to her home to counsel and teach her how to take care of her health. Caritas also gives her with rice, kerosene, anti-retroviral drugs and money to travel to the hospital, added Somari, who learned last year that she has HIV. Her great desire, she said, is "to teach others with HIV/AIDS how to take care of themselves and to educate HIV-negative people about the infection."

Bernadette Glisse, coordinator of the Community Health Program in Siem Reap, told UCA News that Caritas has supported about local 600 families living with HIV/AIDS, and its program focuses on prevention, education and treatment.

Caritas workers have told UCA News they find their work fulfilling.

Piet Sokhun, 30, who has worked with Caritas for five years, said she visits 15-20 HIV/AIDS patients a week as she goes each day to a different village in the Siem Reap area. "I feel very happy doing this job because their happy faces always welcome me," said Sokhun, who has four children.

Phum Kumyu, a 24-year-old colleague, has been counseling people with HIV/AIDS for a year. "Once we find out who needs encouragement, I go and try to make them happy -- tell them jokes," the single woman explained.

"Visiting them makes me very happy because I can see the changes, even in their faces," Kumyu said. She acknowledged, "It is not so easy to meet some patients, especially when they feel sad, but we have to persevere."

The 2007 report of the United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) says 1.6 percent of Cambodians aged 15-49 have HIV, and 16,000 Cambodians already have died of AIDS. UNAIDS also reports that the Mekong-region nation with the next-highest infection rate in that age group is Thailand (1.4 percent), followed closely by Myanmar (1.3 percent). Corresponding figures for Vietnam and Laos are, respectively, 0.5 percent and 0.1 percent.

Article Source: UCAN