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Loving Kids With AIDS
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13972 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
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2 / 1988 |
2,495 Words |
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Alexandra Greeley
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Craig is a bright, friendly six-year-old who likes playing ball and riding his bike. He lives in a small town in the mountains of Pennsylvania with his father and older brother and, until last year, was a normal middle-class boy.
Then suddenly Craig was barred from school, he had no friends, and he could not play outside his own yard. He was a prisoner of public hatred and was terrified by threats of violence.
How and why did this happen? Two years ago Craig's mother received a tainted blood transfusion; she is now in a hospital suffering from the dementia characteristic of the last stages of AIDS. Craig and his father test positive for the AIDS. Craig and his father test positive for the AIDS virus. Craig's brother is the only one spared from the disease. There are several theories of how Craig became exposed through household contact.
"Many people in this community hate us," Craig's father says. "I know they are scared and trying to protect their own children. But, even my best friend doesn't come over anymore." But despite the fear and hostility of the community, the family will not flee. He adds that healthy people cannot grasp the horrors of AIDS. "Death makes a crater in the soul but AIDS doesn't do that... it just chips away at the soul. It's hell on earth a hundred times over."
AIDS. The disease inspires terror wherever it hits. Those infected with AIDS are often shunned because fear short-circuits logic and compassion. Yet sometimes the healthy react to a baby or child with AIDS more gently and lovingly. "Kids are kids," says Rev. Jerry Anderson, a minister with the Episcopal Caring Response to AIDS (ECRA) in Washington, D.C. "When dealing with kids, people don't get distracted by adult issues. Adults can be blamed, but with a child, there's no need to forgive or feel threatened. A child is a helpless victim," he says.
The public is confused about AIDS because information on it is often conflicting or fragmented. Doctors and health-care providers don't have all the answers either. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop sponsored a closed workshop on children with HIV infection in the spring of 1987. He wanted healthcare professionals to grasp the issues and make recommendations on how to deal with the pediatric AIDS crisis. At the time, Koop noted that most children with congenital AIDS became infected during an infected mother's pregnancy or at birth.
The September 1987 figures from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) show that a cumulative total of more than 575 children in the United States under the age of thirteen have been diagnosed with AIDS, most from black and Hispanic inner-city communities. About two-thirds have died.
The 575 figure represents only the children in the final stage of the disease, not those that test HIV positive or show symptoms of AIDS Related Complex (ARC). "We don't have data on everyone with the virus," explains Dr. Martha Rogers of the CDC, although CDC guidelines are being expanded to cover all children.
Most experts believe that the more accurate number of children with the AIDS virus is closer to 2,000 and growing daily. According to the workshop report, there may
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