Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – Aids sufferer Ma Phyu had no idea about the condition until she was diagnosed but has reached a level of acceptance through applying the principles of Buddhism, believing that the affliction is part of her karma, she said yesterday, World Aids Day.

Her lack of information about the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes Aids and methods for prevention and treatment was typical of Burmese living on the Thai side of the Burmese border, aid workers said.

The 42-year-old from Tavoy, the capital of Tenasserim Division, contracted HIV more than five years ago and had been staying at a safe house in Sangkhlaburi, Thailand, where she was diagnosed and was receiving treatment, she said.

“I was naïve about this disease. Had I known about it [and its prevention], I wouldn’t have contracted this deadly virus,” Ma Phyu said.

The former domestic employee arrived in Thailand in 1997 as a migrant worker and obtained work as a maid for a Thai employer before marrying a man from Mergui. The physical symptoms of the disease presented in 2005 and Ma Phyu sought help at the safe house, where she tested positive for HIV, and was formally diagnosed.

Safe house manager Naw Paw Lu Lu said that the people living along the border have no proper awareness or knowledge about HIV. There, six adults and two children were living with HIV.

Meanwhile, further north along the frontier in Thailand, more than 50 HIV-positive women and children live at a women’s shelter in Mae Sot run by Social Action for Women, an NGO that assists displaced women from Burma in crisis situations. All of the shelter residents are Burmese citizens and some of them came for treatment, staff said.

According to a Unicef report released last year, there are more than 240,000 living with HIV/Aids across Burma, of which about 100,000 are women. Two third of these are young people, the report says.

Those who had awareness about HIV could understand their lives but those who were without such knowledge were discriminated against, Ma Phyu added.

“Naïve people think we were sex workers because we have this disease. They see us as inferior creatures, which becomes unbearable. We feel uneasy when meeting their wild and prying eyes. Their gestures and body language communicate condemnation and loathing,” she said.

After being diagnosed, Ma Phyu divorced her husband, but has greater hopes for her children.

“My elder daughter is 13 years old and my son is 11. I hope they get … decent jobs working at a hospital or in clerical work in the shade and shelter,” she said. As for herself, she appeared to accept her condition as part of her karmic destiny.

“I consider my life as suffering and [this illness,] … atonement for my past sins and misdeeds,” Ma Phyu said.

Aids is a condition in which the immune system begins to fail, leading to life-threatening opportunistic infections. Infection with HIV occurs by the transfer of blood, semen, vaginal, pre-ejaculate or breast milk. The four major routes of transmission are unsafe sex, contaminated needles, breast milk and transmission from an infected mother to her baby at birth. Screening of blood products has mostly cut the transmission through blood transfusions or infected blood products in the developed world.

Data: UNAids/Unicef