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Facilities in Honduras
The children at the Love and Life Foundation do not know they are infected with the AIDS virus, nor how difficult it was to find someone who would rent a house where they could live out their short childhoods in a clean, safe environment. These 10 children, ranging in age from a few months to 8 years old, are among the most helpless victims of the AIDS epidemic hitting Central America's poorest country. For reasons no one can fully explain, Honduras has become the epicenter of AIDS in Latin America."AIDS is no longer considered an epidemic here," said Jaime Lopez, the physician in charge of AIDS care for the Health Ministry. "It has become just another common disease. And we have a huge number of people with HIV who are sexually active, and the number of infected children will skyrocket. "Noting that most of the AIDS cases are found among people between the ages of 15 and 39, Jose Roberto Trejo, a physician and director of infectious diseases at the Mario Catarino Rivas Hospital here, said: "We will go from a city that is predominantly young to a city of old people and children. We are in over our heads with AIDS cases. It is devastating us. And all we can do here is watch people die, nothing more." According to the Health Ministry, from 1990 to '96 Honduras reported 5,902 AIDS cases; an additional 3,132 people were identified as carrying the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS. More than three-quarters of the cases were from the area around this sweltering tropical city of 350,000, surrounded by fertile banana plantations, 150 miles northwest of Tegucigalpa, the capital. AIDS experts said those numbers represent only people who have been voluntarily tested at public health facilities, potentially leaving out thousands who are tested privately or never tested at all. A World Health Organization study done at the end of 1994 estimated there were 40,000 HIV-positive people in Honduras at that time, and AIDS experts here said the number has increased rapidly since then. Even using the official count of AIDS cases, according to statistics compiled by the Pan American Health Organization, Honduras's 1995 annual infection rate of 168 cases per million people is almost three times that of Brazil, with 67 cases per million, and far outstrips any other Central American country. Trejo said about 70 percent of Central America's AIDS cases have been found in this city. He attributed the soaring rate to San Pedro Sula's booming sex trade -- the city is the closest urban center to numerous ports along the Atlantic coast -- coupled with the regional tradition of having multiple sexual partners. Because of widespread illiteracy, the use of condoms and other preventative measures is not common. Most of those infected are too poor to seek private treatment and wind up at Trejo's hospital. But doctors there said all they can do is treat patients' symptoms, not offer longer-term treatment, because there simply are no resources to buy AZT and other drugs that could slow the ravages of the disease. A hospital estimate of projected AIDS cases indicated that by 2000 there will be 120 people a day dying of AIDS in San Pedro Sula. "We are following the African pattern here," Trejo said as he toured the wards where adult AIDS patients, many of them now in the final stages of the disease, are cared for. "We are now seeing about an equal number of men and women infected, and that means we see a growing number of children, and it will get worse." Carlos Lopez, director of the Sampedrana Foundation, which does AIDS prevention work among the city's prostitutes, said there are 85 legally registered houses of prostitution in the city, hundreds of unregistered ones and about 4,000 prostitutes. His foundation has designed new educational materials after a survey last year found that most prostitutes did not understand those prepared by the government. "We found many misperceptions about AIDS among the sex workers," Lopez said. "For example, there is a widespread perception that you cannot get AIDS if you use certain sexual positions. And many HIV-positive women continue to work on the streets, and their clients often refuse to wear condoms. These women are living day to day, they cannot afford to lose a client, so they go along. Those who pay the piper call the tune." Trejo predicted that because the number of reported HIV cases began to increase rapidly about five years ago, the number of full-blown AIDS cases will do the same in the next few years, straining the already overburdened health system." After eight years of dealing with the epidemic, can we say things are better?" Carlos Lopez asked. "I don't think so. The epidemic has not been slowed. We have to work on educating the young because we have already lost a generation." Among the most helpless are children born HIV positive, many either abandoned in the hospital or orphaned shortly after birth. AIDS workers said the government has no program for dealing with the hundreds or perhaps thousands of infected children. In the absence of a government plan, responsibility falls to people like Maria Elena Micheletti, the wife of a prosperous businessman here, who began volunteering at an AIDS hospice on the outskirts of the city in the early 1990s. She said she was shocked that the children, most of them orphaned, were treated in the same facilities as adults. She decided to do something about it. Working through a women's group of her Roman Catholic church, Micheletti, with no experience, began to seek help in establishing a home for 10 children, naming it the Life and Love Foundation. It opened in September 1994 and is the only children's care center of its kind in the country.Tucked among lower-class houses on a dirt lane on the outskirts of the city, the foundation offers three meals a day and elementary education for those children old enough to go to school. A psychologist and a doctor also donate their time. "Our primary objective is to give the children the attention and love they deserve," Micheletti said. "But we do not have the resources to do more, and there are many, many more children that need care."A priest lent the house, but the medicine and care are paid for by the 14 women who now help Micheletti with the children, who live an average of three years. Last year, five children died. Irela de Perez said she initially was willing to donate goods and money to the foundation but refused to go to the home for fear that contact with the children would infect her. On a recent visit, Perez and Micheletti were greeted by shouts of joy from the children, who rushed to hug them. "I had to learn," Perez said, holding two children on her lap. "I had to see that they are children, and they need love." © Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company --------------------------------------------------
Misinformation concerning AIDS must be considered only slightly less dangerous than the disease itself. A conspiracy of silence cloaks this disease like none other. This, in spite of the fact that it is infinitely more contagious than leprosy, much more lethal than all of the other sexually transmitted infections combined, and - at this point in time - without any definitive cure. This means that once a person has been infected with AIDS by contaminative exposure, birth via an infected mother, or by activation of the HIV virus (the dormant precursor of the active, killer AIDS infection) - he or she will carry the virus within their bodies for as long as they live. The only way to escape AIDS infection is through avoidance, and/or so-called "safe-sex" practices. Any well-trained physician should be able and willing to provide detailed AIDS-avoidance and/or prevention information to anyone who requests it. ---------------------------------------------------- Copyright © 1997 Lorenzo Dee Belveal
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