HIV/AIDS IN ETHIOPIA

Home for the 19-year-old Ethiopian woman was a small space on a doorstep.

She was ill, had little food, couldn't change her clothes and people entering the house stepped over her.

When Muluberhan became sick, she moved in with her sister and brother-in-law, who have a two-room house in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in Eastern Africa. When Muluberhan was suspected of having HIV/AIDS, she was kicked out of the house.

"Our custom is to go to family when you are sick," said Dr. Meherete Selassie, health and HIV-AIDS program manager for Christian Children's Fund in Ethiopia.

During a talk at the child-development organization's Richmond headquarters this week, Selassie used Muluberhan's story to illustrate the stigma of HIV/AIDS and how home-care volunteers help those with the disease.

1.5 million infected

Selassie asked that the last names of the AIDS patient and the home-care worker not be published.

Ethiopia, which is about twice the size of Texas, has a population of 75 million. An estimated 1.5 million, including 95,000 children, have HIV/AIDS, Selassie said. In addition, the country has about 1.2 million AIDS orphans. It accounts for 30 percent of the deaths of the 15-49 age group.

The stigma complicates the fight against the disease, said William O. Fleming, Christian Children's Fund HIV/AIDS program specialist.

Husbands and wives don't tell each other they have HIV/AIDS, Selassie said. "If there's one person in a family with it, it's likely there's another." Most HIV infections are from heterosexual and mother-to-child transmissions, she added.

Because most people don't want to take AIDS orphans into their homes, households headed by children aged 7 to 18 are becoming common, she said. Often when both parents die of AIDS, relatives will take the family's property and livestock, leaving surviving children with nothing.

Christian Children's Fund is attacking the stigma through education and by trying to reduce high-risk behavior by promoting delayed onset of sexual activity, abstinence, faithfulness, use of condoms and early treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, Selassie said.

Making her own way

Volunteers also are trained to go into the homes of people with HIV/AIDS and care for patients. The volunteers are trained through an Addis Ababa hospital program funded by the Clinton Foundation, she said.

After Muluberhan came to the attention of Christian Children's Fund, Mekedes, one of the home-care volunteers, began working with her.

Muluberhan was being so disrespected, Fleming said, that "her sister's husband would kick her every time he went in or out of the house."

Selassie added: "She was begging us to take her away from that house. . . . We rented a house for her. She's sleeping on the floor. Her weight is increasing. The home-care provider is helping her wash clothes. Now she wants to earn her own living."

Christian Children's Fund has several income-generating programs for HIV/AIDS patients, Selassie said. Muluberhan will be referred to a program sewing school uniforms for children or making items from leather.