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<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=1 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><SPAN class=TopStory>How HIV/AIDS took my beautiful black mother</SPAN>
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Thursday, February 01, 2007
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<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width=355 align=center border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>
</TD></TR><TR><TD><SPAN class=Description></SPAN></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><P class=StoryText align=justify>I bet that like me you think that HIV/AIDS has nothing to do with you. If you have been tested, perhaps you think that by not being infected, you are not affected. Think again.
Here I am at age 25, still not over the fact that my mother died when I was seven years old. Nobody told me her cause of death. While growing up, all I ever heard was "you motha sick and dead".
I contemplated a lot of things before I wrote this article. But most intriguingly, I thought of why my family never thought it important for me to know the real cause of my mother's death, of which I am not ashamed.
I once had little or no education about HIV/AIDS. However, while working with a local newspaper in Clarendon, I was invited to several workshops put on by the PANOS Institute to educate media workers about reporting on the disease.
The exposure aroused my interest, and I began to probe the issue. I learnt of the symptoms of HIV/AIDS and reflected on the condition in which I last saw my mother. I then did some investigations among family members who were close to her during her illness.
My grandmother, who was the main caregiver, declined to reveal anything unless I gave her a substantial reason. One morning she shared the shocking but familiar story.<P class=StoryText align=justify>"A AIDS kill you motha," was my grandmother's prelude to my mother's story, the contents of which were a bit distasteful.
She told me that when my mother left the University Hospital - where she was first admitted - on her own, she fainted before she reached home and had to be assisted to the Denbigh Hospital (now the May Pen Hospital). That was during the late 1980s.
When the nurses at Denbigh found out that she was infected with HIV, they left her alone. Let me emphasise 'alone' because she was in isolation at the hospital, according to my grandmother who had to walk - because of limited transportation at the time - to the hospital every day to bathe her and give her proper meals.
Saddened by the situation, which was putting her under stress, my grandmother spoke to the person in charge at the hospital to release my mother.<P class=StoryText align=justify>I remember the Lada - the most popular vehicle for taxis at the time - pulled up at the gate that afternoon.
My grandmother called for assistance to get a slender lady into the house. Someone asked me, "Yuh know a who that woman?" I answered "No", and the person replied, "A you motha".
My mother was home for two to three weeks under a lot of prayer and spiritual rites before she departed to Denbigh cemetery.
Things could have gone differently then if there was enough of what is available today, such as medication, counselling and support groups, educational campaigns, advocates, and unlimited literature - both electronic and hard copy.<P class=StoryText align=justify>According to a UNAIDS website, it is estimated that by the year 2010 in Sub-Saharan Africa alone, more than 18 million children will have lost at least one parent to AIDS.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Leon Pryce is an undertaker at the Madden's Funeral Home in St James
<SPAN class=Subheadline></SPAN></TD></TR><TR><TD>
Thursday, February 01, 2007
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width=355 align=center border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>
</TD></TR><TR><TD><SPAN class=Description></SPAN></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><P class=StoryText align=justify>I bet that like me you think that HIV/AIDS has nothing to do with you. If you have been tested, perhaps you think that by not being infected, you are not affected. Think again.Here I am at age 25, still not over the fact that my mother died when I was seven years old. Nobody told me her cause of death. While growing up, all I ever heard was "you motha sick and dead".
I contemplated a lot of things before I wrote this article. But most intriguingly, I thought of why my family never thought it important for me to know the real cause of my mother's death, of which I am not ashamed.
I once had little or no education about HIV/AIDS. However, while working with a local newspaper in Clarendon, I was invited to several workshops put on by the PANOS Institute to educate media workers about reporting on the disease.
The exposure aroused my interest, and I began to probe the issue. I learnt of the symptoms of HIV/AIDS and reflected on the condition in which I last saw my mother. I then did some investigations among family members who were close to her during her illness.
My grandmother, who was the main caregiver, declined to reveal anything unless I gave her a substantial reason. One morning she shared the shocking but familiar story.<P class=StoryText align=justify>"A AIDS kill you motha," was my grandmother's prelude to my mother's story, the contents of which were a bit distasteful.
She told me that when my mother left the University Hospital - where she was first admitted - on her own, she fainted before she reached home and had to be assisted to the Denbigh Hospital (now the May Pen Hospital). That was during the late 1980s.
When the nurses at Denbigh found out that she was infected with HIV, they left her alone. Let me emphasise 'alone' because she was in isolation at the hospital, according to my grandmother who had to walk - because of limited transportation at the time - to the hospital every day to bathe her and give her proper meals.
Saddened by the situation, which was putting her under stress, my grandmother spoke to the person in charge at the hospital to release my mother.<P class=StoryText align=justify>I remember the Lada - the most popular vehicle for taxis at the time - pulled up at the gate that afternoon.
My grandmother called for assistance to get a slender lady into the house. Someone asked me, "Yuh know a who that woman?" I answered "No", and the person replied, "A you motha".
My mother was home for two to three weeks under a lot of prayer and spiritual rites before she departed to Denbigh cemetery.
Things could have gone differently then if there was enough of what is available today, such as medication, counselling and support groups, educational campaigns, advocates, and unlimited literature - both electronic and hard copy.<P class=StoryText align=justify>According to a UNAIDS website, it is estimated that by the year 2010 in Sub-Saharan Africa alone, more than 18 million children will have lost at least one parent to AIDS.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Leon Pryce is an undertaker at the Madden's Funeral Home in St James