PNG: HIV infected people buried alive in Highlands
Updated
Distressing stories have emerged from Papua New Guinea where it's been reported that people with HIV/AIDS are being buried alive by relatives in the country's Southern Highlands. The stories have raised serious questions about whether money for AIDS campagins in PNG is getting to where it's needed most.
Presenter: Barbara Heggen
Speakers: Margaret Marabe, PNG HIV/Aids advocate; Maire Bopp, Chief Executive Officer of the Pacific AIDS Foundation
SFX.....MARABE: One of them was my cousin who was buried alive. I said why they are doing that, and they said if we let them live, stay in the same house, eat together, and use or share utensils, we will contract the disease and we to might die like them. They were crying and calling out their relatives names and called for help. Some said, mamma, pappa as they were forcefully buried and covered with soil.
HEGGEN: That's Margaret Marabe, an HIV/AIDS advocate whose account of live burials has been published in Port Moresby's Post Courier.
Her story comes just months after a report from the Australasian think tank, the Centre for Independence Studies, highlighted cases of young women in Papua New Guinea being tortured and killed because of superstitions that witchcraft is responsible for AIDS-related deaths.
Papua New Guinea has the highest incidents of HIV/AIDS in the Pacific region, accounting for 80 per cent of reported cases. Estimates range between 11,000 and 22,000 cases in PNG alone.
The Centre for Independent Studies has predicted that AIDS could kill more than a third of PNG's adult population within 20 years.
Maire Bopp, Chief Executive Officer of the Pacific AIDS Foundation says as heartbreaking as these stories are, they don't represent a general Pacific attitude to AIDS.
While the incidents in the region continues to rise, attitudes to the disease do seem to be improving. She says that governments and churches throughout Polynesia especially, have done much to reduce the social stigma that has been associated with AIDS.
Papua New Guinea receives millions of dollars from Australia alone to help it deal with the AIDS crisis. But Ms Bopp says these stories coming out of PNG raise serious questions about where that money is actually going.
BOPP: I will be very interested to be sitting with people who have had their hands on it and being able to listen and see some facts behind it. I'm not sure what kind of action or leaders taking when they hear of something like that. It's a big country, but they have leaders and I'm not sure personally how committed these leaders are in making a difference and being able to address specific stories like that.
I'm not so sure that there has been enough done to provide some kind of a more supportive environment for those who actually have HIV. I don't think that there's been enough invested in at least giving them a sense of dignity and regaining their own self.
And addressing those particular issues when they do arise and they have, and they still are and they will still happen in the future and the question that I would like to ask some of these leaders and people who are involved there is what do you do, simple, practical way forward. When you see this what are the steps forward.
