FALSE STATISTICS ON STIGMA AND DISCRIMINATION?

On World AIDS Day, there was a report in the Post Courier quoting the Chairman of the National AIDS Council Dr Banare Bun on stigma and discrimination on AIDS Care in this country.

He said that a study among HIV positive people in Chimbu found that 60% had been denied health services, 71% had been physically assaulted, 85% verbally assaulted, harassed or threatened and 67.5% excluded from family gatherings, all because of HIV status.

I have always had respect for Dr Bun but feel the need to question his figures as there seems to be an element of fakery, probably by the persons who gave him the statistics in the first place. 

How many people were interviewed? Were they interviewed at care centres? or at the bar of the local hotel? Who were the interviewers?

Let us look at the AIDS support in the Chimbu. How many AIDS centres in the province? If people were said to be denied treatment, was this permanent?

Are they getting treatment now? Was the supply of antiretroviral drugs depleted at the time?

Of those claiming to be physically assaulted, who was responsible? Was it AIDS clinic workers or other people? Given that treatment is confidential, who would have known? Many thin people have TB. How did assault take place? Where? by whom?

We have long been told the fake story that gay people run the risk of being arrested by police. The insinuation is that they will be reported by health workers.

There were 85% in the Chimbu health centres who were insulted, harassed or threatened. How did that happen? Was this at the hands of health workers or visitors to the centre?

There will be times when health workers will talk cross to HIV sufferers for several reasons. They have delayed their resupply of ARV drugs. They have not taken the drugs as prescribed.

As well, 67.5 % were excluded from family gatherings? This is not quite as simple as that.

There will be those not on ARV in the final stages who raise negative responses in a family gathering. People on ARV may look quite normal.

Those not on ARV may look like skeletons with hair falling out and cause unnecessary response among family members. Some family members will talk of sorcery. It is better for the infected person to avoid family gatherings.

Some HIV infected people will avoid gatherings because they have not told their families of their HIV status. Linda kept her status secret from family for 3 years. She was afraid that her sisters-in-law would spread the news to their families.

So her carer was blamed for her skeleton look, loss of hair, cracking finger nails and dementia with hallucinations of spirit killers come to harm her.

There is another aspect to dementia. That is to complain of mistreatment. Some of the complaints of AIDS sufferers may be the result of delusions. They are hungry so they say they are being starved. The real reason is that they refuse to eat.

I would not accept any advice from a person who had the virus without ARV for more than 5 years. They are probably demented and making any complaint that they can think of.

The people to blame are those caring for them. They are the closest targets as carer, family and health workers. There may be stigma and discrimination among health workers but we need first to look at the mental state of the complainants.

Many AIDS sufferers without ARV are demented and mentally retarded. They are not telling lies but have forgotten what the truth is. 

It is the workers collecting data who are the liars.  They undoubtedly know that the people interviewed are not fully part of reality any more. But that does not matter.

DEMENTIA FRIGHTENS FAMILIES

In the final stages of AIDS, the sufferer not on antiretroviral (ARV) treatment will suffer increasing dementia as their brain continues to be affected by collateral damage caused by the HIV attacking the small intestine and brain.

Damage to the gut wall will stop absorption of nutrients, salts and water. The water-salt balance will change, blocking passage of oxygen, nutrients, salts and water to the cells, including brain cells.

In final stages, people with AIDS will suffer dementia and memory loss. They forget where they live and how to get home.  The stove will be lit and the person forgets and walks away.

I have had experience with several people in the final stages of AIDS, particularly as caretaker of 3 Angels Care at East Boroko.

Linda lived with me for three years and gave birth to our son. She was the one who would be the mother to my daughters. But she was diagnosed as HIV positive in 1999.

LInda was happy, friendly and loving to my daughters. Life was good until diagnosed HIV positive.

She had the virus for 6 years at that time but never tested. She had given blood at her work place three months before but never told she was HIV positive.

Her personality slowly changed. She ceased leaving the house believing that the girls’ mother had sent highlands men to kill her. She was violent to my daughters after I left the house.

She became quite paranoid in believing that she had killed the girl friend of her first husband and was being hunted by the woman’s mother from Samarai who waited for her at night as a black bird with fiery red eyes.

Linda would tell the family who believed her hallucinations. They blamed me for allowing my daughters’ mother to harass Linda. It was not true.

A characteristic of dementia is the belief of being hunted and killed by real people or spirits. The person spends the last part of living terrified of being killed. Health workers may get the blame for any delusions suffered. Linda blamed me for starving her while the family ate. Not true.

Sameo came to live at my house after 3 Angels Care was full in 2004. She stayed with me for 8 weeks before she died. She was suffering the full blast of dementia at the time. Looking after her was hell.

One night, she asked to be let out of the back door to wash her clothes. After a few minutes, I noticed no movement in the laundry. She was not there. I searched the streets but could not find her.

At 3 am she came back and said she had never left but was playing cards under the house with a group of men. Not true.

Some days later, she told the neighbour that she had won a large sum of money. But the police came and arrested the white man and took him to the cells. She caught a taxi to the police station and paid K1000 bail. I wish I had been told.

Then she told me that her room had been broken into by a gang of raskols who attacked her. But she was saved by the Prime Minister who arrived at the window in a helicopter.

She died two weeks later after what seemed like suffocation. My daughters said she would go through my trousers pockets and send them down for cigarettes.

Damon Courtenay died in 1991 and his life struggle recorded by his loving father Bryce Courtenay in the book April Fools Day. He was infected with HIV through blood transfusion as a haemophiliac.

Damon suffered massive dementia caused in part from smoking marijuana. He had all kinds of delusions.

Over his time with HIV/AIDS he believed he was a famous doctor who had discovered a cure for HIV/AIDS and was being pursued by the CIA.

He claimed the US Government had introduced the HIV virus and wanted to kill him to remove the cure. Doctors and nurses at the hospital were CIA agents.

He believed he was the chief of police and general of the armed forces who was leading his troops to oppose the CIA. He was not popular at the local police station.

His father said in his book that the family was strong and supported Damon until his death.

DEMENTIA AWAITS THOSE NOT ON ARV

A generation of HIV sufferers is now on anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs. Most will not know of the horrors of AIDS that had afflicted people in the past and present.

ARV returns the sufferer almost to normal with the HIV blocked in the vessels of the blood and lymph systems and the attack on the small intestine stopped. The virus replicates in the millions of CD4 cells protecting the gut wall from leaked infection.

Digestion begins again with absorption of nutrients, salts and water through the new epithelial cells of the gut wall that have been given time to renew.

We must never forget the horror for HIV infected people in isolated areas unable to obtain supplies of ARV. Others even in urban areas may never have been tested.

Blockage of the small intestine prevents absorption of water, salts and nutrients. The water-salt balance is destroyed upsetting the whole metabolism of the body. It is worse for gay men infected by gut parasites from licking anuses. They have a double attack.

Break-down of nutrition in body cells comes to a halt. The body has no reserves of protein and has to take existing protein from the muscles. The finger and toe nails start to crack while the hair falls out. The person becomes skeleton like.

The virus breaks through the blood-brain barrier causing brain damage and injury to the optic nerve. Dementia comes but has several causes including the break down of absorption and dehydration.

The infected person in later years suffers dementia with fears of attack by evil people and demons seeking to kill. This can have a fearful effect on family. The sufferer may wander away and miss out on taking the daily ARV drugs.

Families have enough problems without being accused of stigma and discrimination. I looked after Linda and our son for 3 years and know all the fear that her HIV brought to my little family. My son died in 2002 while his mother died in 2003.

She would not let her family know of her infection so all the blame passed to me. She looked like a skeleton so it must have been my fault. She screamed at night so I must have been hurting her. She was always unhappy so I must have been abusing her.

On the basis of this, AIDS was banned at the levels of the UN and Foreign Affairs PNG by lesbian predator Elizabeth Cox of AusAID and gay predator Stewart Watson now Head UNAIDS in PNG. Please click:

PAIN NEVER FAR AWAY

NO FORGIVENESS FOR CRUEL ACTIVISTS

They spread the word that Positive Living was a false message and that Linda was being abused. She was certainly being abused.......by the HIV virus.

They were protecting the secret AusAID gay and lesbian agenda from any focus on FAMILY. They also banned any mention of the attack on the gut lining. It was too close to the gut parasite attack on gay anus licking men. Not good publicity for gay sexuality.

TWO GROUPS OF HIV/AIDS SUFFERERS

There are two groups of people suffering from HIV/AIDS. Both live in Papua New Guinea and many other parts of the world.

There is the group with permanent access to anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs. They will be able to turn back almost to normal provided they continue to take the drugs. The virus in their blood has been destroyed thus stopping the attack on the small intestine.

They are able to return to absorption of nutrients, salts and water through the gut wall. They can put on weight and live for many more years, perhaps 20-40 more years.

Then there is the group living in isolated areas with no access to ARV. They drop to death within a matter of years. The virus attacks the small intestine slowly stopping the absorption of nutrients, salts and water. 

The sufferer drops in weight almost to a skeleton. The loss of protein causes finger and toe nails to break and hair to fall out. After about 6-8 years, they begin to suffer dementia with hallucinations and delusions.

They will die within two or three years more. It is in the interests of all sufferers to gain unbroken access to ARV and for the Government to make sure that ARV is available to isolated areas without any break in supply.

STIGMA AND DISCRIMINATION - FALSE MESSAGE

There is so much false information in the community on family support for people living with HIV/AIDS. It has been turned into false ideology against family.

Most families are struggling to exist and find great difficulty with any family member suffering from HIV infection. 

Many young people have become infected through a promiscuous lifestyle and given their family trouble by boozing, staying out at night and refusing to be part of family life. 

Foreign lesbian activists have used these people to spread on anti-family message and given a false message of rejection. But rejection of their family may be closer to the truth.

So HIV sufferers had started a new trick. They have kept away from family and pretended to have been rejected. It may have been their boozing and violence that caused the problems. They become part of the foreign lesbian propaganda machine against family and expect to be looked after.

All the young people at 3 Angels Care had rejected family and planned to take over the centre as their permanent home away from home. The young man had been rejected by all his brothers through his drunkenness and violence. He bashed his wife at the centre.

He used to work for UNDP promoting....wait for it..... Positive Living. He spent all his pay on booze. So we had a drunken, violent, wife bashing, family rejected bum promoting Positive Living and telling of rejection by family. Great work if you can get it. You can fool most of the people some of the time.

One young woman had rejected her husband who was also HIV positive and started a relationship with her cousin thus making problems for both families. Her new boy bashed her at the centre. She would talk of stigma and discrimination by family.

The situation becomes even worse for the family, particularly in isolated regions where sufferers have no access to ART. In the later stages of infection, they will suffer from dementia with delusions and hallucinations. They will believe that they are being pursued to be killed.

They will become violent, forever seeing people waiting to harm them. What does the family do when the HIV loved one is now terrifying the family, particularly the children?

Dementia is often accompanied by wandering. The person will disappear and only come back if found in the town. The problem may be that memory loss has caused them to forget how to come home.

They forget the number of the bus or PMV. The young woman may have had sex with many men in her wanderings. She is now mentally retarded.

Hallucinations at the end of AIDS may be so frightening as to be seen as evidence of sorcery. I looked after Linda dying of AIDS. 

She thought an old lady from Samarai turned into a black bird and was waiting at night in the trees outside the house to kill her. Neighbours and my children would hear hysterical screams at night. I can still hear her 12 years later.

MOST READERS COME FROM PAPUA NEW GUINEA

Papua New Guinea is the world home of family Positive Living in AIDS awareness

We are pleased to advise that most hits to this blog come from Papua New Guinea, followed by Russia, United States and Australia.

I used to think I was artificially inflating the PNG hits by opening the blog every day. But I do not download to lift the hit count. I just put new reports on the blog. There have been times when I do not open the blog for a week, yet the count still rises by 300 hits.

The fact is that the AIDS Holistics Positive Living message has an ongoing wide readership in this country. That may explain that the focus across the board is moving to FAMILY. 

The Head of UNAIDS had warned us over the last 3 years not to hide behind FAITH and FAMILY. Even he is now writing on the importance of family to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual community. Times are changing.

TEACH PNG COUPLES TO SOLVE CONFLICTS

The National 28 Nov 2014 - Letter to the editor

Gender violence is deplorable. It happens all over the world but currently media initiatives to tackle it in PNG appear totally one-sided and ill-conceived as only men are to blame.

If PNG women want their men to behave like gentlemen, then they have to behave like ladies too. PNG women are hot tempered and aggressive. They can get drunk and be stupid too.

In my view, the only way to reduce domestic violence is to teach couples how to solve conflicts on a constructive way, without both sides losing their temper.

Comment: The campaign to promote women’s rights in Papua New Guinea has been flawed by the UN and AusAID lesbians. They focus only on women and blame all men.

They make fake statistics on violence to women and girls. All violence is blamed on men whereas much of the violence reported to care organizations may be deliberately attributed to men but caused by other women and girls.

They tell women and girls of their rights but do not include men. The lesbian activists do not want men to cooperate but appear to still bash women. Not all men are violent.

The Seventh Day Adventist church put the figure at 60% of women bashed and 46% of men abused by their wives. We are in an era of women’s rights and much is abused by women and girls.

Many women spend their time playing cards and not looking after the family. They drink homebrew and smoke marijuana. They bash their small children who disturb them.

The long time trick has been to bash husbands and then run to the police, brothers and uncles to complain about violence to them.

My daughters’ mother would accuse me of sex with women. That enabled her to refuse to wash clothes and cook food. Get one of your prostitute girl friends to do your jobs. She would bash me and then run to her uncles to cry domestic violence. 

She lasted two years before I kicked her out. My two daughters are with me. Their mother lasted one year with another man who kicked her out for stabbing him in the stomach.

There is obviously trickery among some women in making police reports. We assume that violence is started by men. But it may be the women.

My daughters’ mother was violent and tried to have me deported for womanizing and domestic violence. But it was all started by her. She had no proof when I went to National Court for custody.

UN lesbian activists do not want peace between women and men. They want ongoing confrontation. Tell the women of their rights but not the men.

Tell women they can go to discos, make contact with men by mobile phones, have sex outside their relationship, use family money to play cards, hold all market sales money and tell lies to Medecins Sans Frontieres about violence. 

Care group lesbians undoubtedly falsify all statistics on violence. Even if a man came for treatment, he would be recorded as a woman bashed by a man. Lesbian activists have several tricks to inflate statistics.

I had been bashed by my daughters' mother many times. Had I gone to a lesbian supported care group, I would have been recorded as a woman. Put this person down as having been bashed 45 times. That makes 496 bashings of women this week.

A recent report stated that 87% of PNG women suffer violence in their lives. It would be more accurate to state that 100% of all men and women have suffered violence in their lives. 

I have been bashed in PNG. My nose has been broken. I have been stabbed twice. My jaw has been dislocated  by a king hit. I have been hit by a rock and a smashed beer bottle. Ignore all that. He's a man. He probably deserved it. No I did not. I am just a gentle dad.