Information and Health Care Survive AIDS Woman
“I really wanted to die when I was seriously sick,” said a widow as she struggled to hold back tears. At 45 years of age, Sek Sovann is living with HIV/AIDS and looking after three kids. She got the virus from her husband, a former government soldier, who died in 2000, two months after his blood test.
“I felt terrible shock and when I leant that my husband had AIDS,” she said with a shaking voice. “Since then, I became weaker and weaker and last year I fell seriously sick. I cried days and nights. I didn’t know what would happen to my young children after I died.”
But now, with assistance of a local non-governmental organisation, Community Poverty Reduction (CPR), who contacted Sovann in 2003, Sovann has restarted her life with the kids -- 7 and 11 year-old daughters and a son, 17, -- in the village of Kruos, Kampong Chhnang province.
“Through our home-based care work, we found her lying in her home. At that time, Kampong Chhnang did not have any access to ART (Anti-Retroviral Therapy). We sent her to a health center in Prey Veng province to get some medicine,” said Chhoueng Kimsan, CPR programme officer. With support from CPR, Sovann now gets ART regularly in the provincial health center and she can do her farming and enjoy life with her kids.
“I am really happy now because I am able to carry on my living with my kids. Without the information and health care from Community Poverty Reduction, I would have died and my children would be orphans now,” Sovann said with a smile.
There are about 10 people in Kruos village living with HIV/AIDS. Five of them get home-based care from CRP, Chhoueng Kimsan said.
Speaking at the World AIDS Day on December 1, Teng Kunthy -- Secretary General of the National AIDS Authority --, said although HIV transmission in the sex industry has decreased in recent ye
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