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Society’s relation to drug addicts and HIV/AIDS patients
Does everyone have an opportunity for a dignified life?
When we talk about violation of human rights, it sounds terrifying that someone is taken something which belongs to him with his birth, as everyone has a right to a dignified life. However, with the violation of human rights someone’s dignity is taken away and very often his right to life. Not having access to health services, social insurance, taking away the right to work, stigmatization and isolation are some of the violations of human rights that drug addicts and HIV/AIDS patients suffer.
The case with Stojan, a citizen of Prilep, who is an AIDS patient, is a case that whole Macedonia is familiar with, but a case that is closed for the media and the public, that is not actual because “AIDS happens to others, doesn’t it?”. Stojan, after his two children and wife died of AIDS, still lives isolated, he cannot buy bread yet and he has not got access to health services yet. Is Stojan alive!? Yes, but where is the human dignity in all that, especially when it is known that AIDS is not a quarantine disease and it cannot be transmitted through everyday social contacts.
Second case. Marko is a young person who receives methadone therapy, a former drug addicts and, as he says, he has managed to get out of the drug hell himself and to get back to the normal rhythm of life. Marko had found a job, but when his employer found out that he was on a methadone therapy, Marko was fired.
“He simply told me that he was very sorry, but that he could not have drug addicts in his company. I am not an addict; I am in a methadone therapy. I am fit for work. But I know that a lot of people think that there is no way out for drug addicts. Once “a junkie”, always “a junkie”. It is not like that, I want to go on with the normal life, but the question is how?”
It is a public secret that many who are in a methadone therapy are hepatitis C patients. However, the state thinks that their medical treatment would be too expensive, so these people are left to the fate. The state does not want to give 15.000 Euro of its budget per patient, as it costs for a medical treatment of a hepatitis C patient and it is easier not to take care of these people. They are just drug addicts in treatment, aren’t they!?
Nora Stojanovik from the Macedonian Harm Reduction Network, a NGO that has recently, together with a few other non-governmental organizations dealing with the issue of addicts and HIV/AIDS, implemented the national campaign “Be a part of the solution, not a part of the problem”, for reducing discrimination and stigmatization towards people using drugs, says that the campaign has been directed towards institutions that should give help to addicts, but they do not do it, as well as towards the public, which very often discriminates addicts.
“Discrimination and isolation are sometimes invisible for the others, but addicts feel them everywhere. They can be felt at schools, in health institutions, in social institutions, simply everywhere where these people address to or in the environment they live in”, says Stojanovik.
When human rights are violated, it is often followed by a trial. However, most often the case is stuck somewhere in the court labyrinths, so there is no end.
“It is not strange that the ones who sue, have given up somewhere half way, not having the strength to fight with the system’s institutions”, adds Stojanovik.
Re-socialization is the way for drug addicts to return to the normal, to return to everyday life, a way to their healing. However, if it is announced that addicts’ re-socialization center is to be built in a settlement, it is followed by a storm of protests by the citizens who “do not want any trouble nearby”.
“In our country we still cannot talk about real re-socialization of addicts, but I have to point out that their medical treatment is still the biggest problem. A good program for medical treatment is the basis for re-socialization of these people. The existing programs for medical treatment are badly run programs”, says Stojanovik.
Vesna Zlatevska, a long-year activist in the non-governmental sector, who works on the issue of human rights violation in terms of drug addicts, says that very often the official people in institutions, in legislation, in the police, even in the center for medical treatment of addicts in Kisela Voda, have incorrect and discriminating behavior towards the addicts.
“I do not know what to call the behavior of the medical personnel in the Center in Kisela Voda, where it is announced on the door that a methadone therapy to the patient has to be given in presence of a medical person and security. In which other health institution a patient, besides getting therapy in presence of a medical person, gets therapy in presence of security?” asks Zlatevska resignedly. She says that if the addict tells the doctor that he is in a methadone therapy or if he tells, for general security, his and the doctor’s and the other patients’, that he is a hepatitis C carrier, he is most often left without any doctor’s help.
“A dentist cannot say that he cannot offer a health service because the patient has a certain virus. Protection and procedure should be maintained anyway, sterilization of instruments has to be done any time; you never know who a carrier of a certain virus is. That is why the set standards in the health system have to be obeyed”, says Vesna Zlatevska.
“As part of the non-governmental organization H.E.R.A there is a HIV/AIDS counseling office”, points out Drasko Kostovski from this organization.
“When I talk about violation of human rights of HIV/AIDS patients, I cannot say what the situation generally is, as, to say roughly, we still do not know how many alive HIV carriers there are in the country. If we had the whole picture of the virus carriers, we would also have the picture for violation of their rights. There are individual cases, when someone, being an HIV carrier, has lost his job, or when we have been called in a school to explain that the HIV virus is not transmittable in everyday social contacts”, explains Kostovski, adding that the lack of information about this disease is what makes people be afraid and isolate virus carriers from themselves.
“At the moment education is the most important, because speculations can be avoided only with knowledge, as well as fear and dismissing a person fit for work (an HIV virus carrier can function normally for years)”, adds Kostovski. According to him, what we are to expect and be prepared is the discovery of new HIV-positives. “When we find out the real number, we will be able to talk about the rights, too. What I can talk about is the latest case of an AIDS patient, who was a foreign citizen. When his disease was in final phase, the patient turned to the Infective Clinic in Skopje. This information leaked from the Clinic to the press, something that must not have happened and his disease turned into an indecent media horror story”, says Kostovski.
It is obvious that the public’s lack of information, as well as the sensationalistic journalism result in drug addicts to be isolated from the environment and the lack of education in terms of the HIV virus has led to the country to be covered by collective hypochondria, which is a reflection of our overall fake-living in all fields.
How to avoid violation of human rights? Real people on the real place, education of those who meet vulnerable groups of people in their jobs and education for everyone. And the media can contribute to general education to great extent. Let sensationalistic journalism give place to the journalism supported by facts, without any unnecessary horror-stories. |
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