http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070827/wl ... 0827121945
AIDS victims 'buried alive' in PNG
1 hour, 41 minutes ago
PORT MORESBY (AFP) - Some AIDS victims are being buried alive in
Papua New Guinea by relatives who cannot look after them and fear
becoming infected themselves, a health worker said Monday.
Margaret Marabe, who spent five months carrying out an AIDS awareness
campaign in the remote Southern Highlands of the South Pacific
nation, said she had seen five people buried while still breathing.
One was calling out "Mama, Mama" as the soil was shoveled over his
head, said Marabe, who works for a volunteer organisation called Igat
Hope, Pidgin English for I've Got Hope.
"One of them was my cousin, who was buried alive," she told reporters.
"I said, 'Why are they 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 too might die.'"
Villagers had told her it was common for people to bury AIDS victims
alive.
Marabe appealed to the government and aid agencies to ensure the
HIV/AIDS awareness programme carried out in cities and towns was
extended to the rural areas, where ignorance about the disease is
widespread.
Women accused of being witches have been tortured and murdered by
mobs holding them responsible for the apparently inexplicable deaths
of young people stricken by the epidemic, officials and researchers
say.
A recent United Nations report said PNG was facing an AIDS
catastrophe, accounting for 90 percent of HIV infections in the
Oceania region.
HIV diagnoses had risen by around 30 percent a year since 1997,
leaving an estimated 60,000 people living with the disease in 2005.
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From 2 Peter 1:10 So, dear brothers and sisters, work hard to prove that you really are among those God has called and chosen. Doing this, you will never stumble or fall away.
27 Aug 2007, 3:10 pm
