HART Fighting Discrimination
HIV/AIDS Program – fighting disease and discrimination
A high rate of HIV/AIDS infection is not the only challenge facing the village of Bung Krom in Kandal Province. 
The equally high levels of discrimination that those living with HIV/AIDS face is a problem that many believe is preventing the village from effectively tackling its silent killer.
It is a problem that Neang Sophat is only too familiar with. As a participant in the AOC run HIV/AIDS Awareness Resources and Training (HART) Program, the 52 year-old has seen the devastation that discrimination and ignorance wreaks on the lives of HIV/AIDS sufferers in her village.
To illustrate her point, she tells the poignant story of a young woman who became HIV positive after her husband had contracted the disease after sleeping with a prostitute. Despite displaying all the symptoms of HIV/AIDS, the woman refused to acknowledge she was HIV positive.
“She kept insisting that it was something different,” Sophat recalls of her regular visits with the woman. “She even claimed that she had already taken an HIV/AIDS test and that the results were negative.”
Within a few months, the young woman was dead – another victim of Bung Krom’s silent killer. Although Sophat was not able to help her, she is determined to tackle the problem of HIV/AIDS in her community head on, helping other women who have very often become victims of a disease contracted from unfaithful spouses.
Sophat is a tireless advocate for the women in her village and also one of the first volunteers with AOC from the community. Her involvement with AOC began when she was asked to meet a delegation of AOC representatives arriving for the first time on the shores of the Lvea Em flood-plain back in 1993.
“I had to walk through the flood waters to meet them,” she recalls, explaining how her job as Head of Womens Affairs for the local Government as well as her fearlessness in welcoming foreigners led her to be chosen as the official representative to greet the delegation. “When I heard that they wanted to come and help our village, I was very happy to meet them. I knew that we needed help.”
Thirteen years later and Sophat is still at the forefront of helping the women of Bung Krom, still in partnership with AOC. For many years she has been responsible for distributing AOC medical supplies and keeping records for the Ministry of Health. More recently, after being trained about HIV/AIDS transmission and prevention with the HART team, she has become the first point of contact for a number of villagers suffering with HIV/AIDS, especially women who fear rejection from family and friends should they contract the disease.
The training that she has received from AOC on HIV/AIDS awareness, prevention and care has made her the ideal teacher of other families within the community. She can often be seen wandering the dirt tracks of Bung Krom, encouraging others within the village to be open about HIV/AIDS and speak out the truth about the disease instead of just relying on rumours and gossip.
“Before, we were not even allowed to talk about someone having AIDS because we were afraid the Government might fine us,” Sophat admits, explaining how a now obsolete Government policy previously discouraged open discussion about HIV/AIDS by threatening to fine anyone who ‘accused’ another of having the disease. “People are much more open now and willing to admit that they have AIDS. I think they are also more likely to seek help these days.”
She is enthusiastic about AOC initiatives to educate her fellow villagers, including using Karaoke Video training and games to teach young people about HIV/AIDS and distributing colourful booklets detailing important facts about HIV/AIDS to families in Bung Krom. She believes it is one of the primary reasons that the rate of infection within her village has been on the decline over the past twelve months.
Nevertheless, Sophat knows there is still a long way to go in the fight against HIV/AIDS and the ignorance that surrounds it. She returns to the story of the young woman who died while still denying she had AIDS.
According to Sophat: “If there was no discrimination, she would have admitted that she had AIDS and we could have helped her. She could have become part of the AOC Homecare program and her life would certainly have been longer.”
This sense of remorse for the past combined with a determination to better the future has made Neang Sophat the model volunteer for AOC. She epitomises the AOC vision of overseeing programmes that are locally-owned and locally-run, with people from the community passing on knowledge and skills to others in their area.
Her husband is worried that she works too hard for a woman of her age, but Sophat can do little more than respond to the driving force that is inside her. “I don’t want anyone in my village to get sick,” she plainly states. “When they get sick, they get poor; and when they get poor, their lives get harder.”