Gya: Legislating against AIDS fears

Guyana is among seven Caribbean countries that may soon pass laws to protect people with HIV and AIDS against stigma and discrimination.

The proposals are being formulated by the Pan Caribbean Partnership Against HIV/AIDS (PANCAP).

The other countries are Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, Dominica and Barbados.

Delegates at a recent three-day conference in the Dominican Republic said a major obstacle to fighting the spread of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, continued to be a factor in the discrimination of infected persons by communities and employers.

The new recommendations by PANCAP propose draft legislation to protect people from being fired from their job

I would think that a major obstacle in fighting HIV is fear. People need to know that they can hug HIV sufferers without fear of contracting HIV from a simple embrace. So many people who have HIV need to be touched with love and compassion. It doesn't matter how the person contracted HIV, the very human need for contact is part of the AIDS experience.

The AIDS sufferer of today is as the leper of Biblical times. The Gospel of Mark relates:

And there came a leper to him, beseeching him, and kneeling down to him, and saying unto him, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean. (Mark 1:40-41)

Here, Jesus does the unthinkable. He does what no other person would have done, both because of fear of contracting the disease and not wanting to be ritually unclean. Jesus touches the leper. When was the last time the leper had been touched? Nobody knows. All we do know is that Jesus touched him. Apart from the healing result of it, that touch must have been as water to parched ground. To be touched by this man, Jesus, when nobody else would touch a leper!

That is how many an HIV sufferer feels. People, through ignorance and fear concerning the transmission of HIV, enclose the afflicted in a sterile bubble and deprive him of human contact. While this touch cannot be legislated, governments can and should pass laws to prevent discrimination against people wth HIV/AIDS. It is the just and right thing to do. As for the touching, that is something that we must do voluntarily out of the simple recognition that it needs to be done.