For all who have experienced it, the death of a parent is a very personal loss, a unique situation for every individual, leaving the bereaved offspring in situations as varied as the human race itself, depending upon the circumstances surrounding the death.

Who will take care of us when HIV/AIDS strikes?

If the parent who dies is at an advanced age, there is usually not much trauma for those left behind. Life goes on. But imagine, for a moment, the death of one or both parents from the ravages of HIV/AIDS, at a young age, leaving a defenceless child or children to face a hostile environment and an uncertain future, fraught with hazards.

It is, indeed, a vicious cycle. In Thailand, a child whose parents have contracted the HIV virus and are mostly doomed to die of AIDS, is not only inherently disadvantaged by discrimination and the social mores which place barriers - artificial or real - around the child, but also must face the physical barriers which are equally devastating. With parents facing imminent death and too sick to work, the unfortunate - and totally innocent victims - must seek employment to support them, precluding any possibility of education.

The child is thus condemned to a life of unskilled work, lack of social benefits, a total loss of self-esteem and a steady downward spiral from which there is little or no escape.

Vuth, for example, is a 10-year-old in Grade 4 of a Primary School in a district of Sisaket Province in Thailand’s north-east. He would rather roam the woods near his home and go fishing than go to school where he is ostracised and called the “Aids kid”. Vuth has two younger sisters - one in Grade 3 who does not have any particular problems - but the other, even in kindergarten, is subject to teasing about her HIV-infected mother and she has no ‘playmates’.

Happy childhood: but for how long?

“My children have never done anything wrong in their lives,” says Vuth’s mother Bua, HIV-infected for six years. “Since their father died of AIDS, although none of my three children are infected,” Bua complained, “they cannot live normal lives and they suffer discrimination at their school, at the market and in the everyday life of the village.”

In another case, in a neighbouring sub-district, Aree and her two sisters were alone with their HIV-infected mother and were the object of much discrimination at Primary School. When their mother became too sick to work and support the family, Aree’s elder sister had to leave school to take on the role of family provider - at age 12!

Aree continued at school, in spite of being “left out” and, although she likes to study, she will leave after Grade Nine. “After that, I do not know what I will do. I have nobody with whom I can discuss my problems; no friends; I eat lunch alone; and none of the others in class want me to join group projects,” said this sad little child, tears welling in her huge, pretty brown eyes.

We have done nothing wrong

Even further down the scale are AIDS orphans who, having lost both parents, are in the custody of ‘carers’, often grandparents who are old, and in most cases, desperately poor. A child, already psychologically scarred - even if not afflicted with symptoms of HIV - faces a generation gap with these aged grandparents which, added to grinding poverty and often lack of schooling, can lead many youngsters to take to a life as street children and, worse, child prostitution and its concomitant destructive forces.

This is an oft-repeated scenario that would haunt any mother - anywhere. Yet, for some 200,000 Thai children, poised at the dawn of the New Millennium, it is the only world they know - and, maybe, will ever know.

But from the bleakness of the plight of these children, help from many sources, including UNICEF, the UN Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS, Buddhism (the Kingdom’s religion), teachers, the public and private sectors, health and social workers and a legion of volunteers, brings hope and strength.

Through the “Sangha” (Buddhist monkhood), many children, either orphans or with one surviving - albeit ailing from HIV and, thus, dependent - parent, have found solace in their grief, gained confidence and new directions in life.

Counselling and support groups help ease the pain and sorrow

Manit Sricome was 12 years old when her step-father died of AIDS. Her biological father and her mother Noi had divorced when she was only four and her stepfather tested HIV positive which developed into the fatal disease. Manit was traumatized to learn that the mother she adored had also tested positive for HIV.

What can a 12-year-old do, faced with an ailing mother and two siblings, a little brother of eight and a baby sister, from the stepfather, just five years old? The family was shattered while, at the same time, ironically enough, their dire circumstances brought them closer together.

Friends and relatives in the village, too, rallied around and, “Mum joined an HIV/AIDS victim support group. We nursed each others’ hearts,” said Manit, gesticulating with her slender hands and pointing to her heart.

“My mum can still work and she is a seamstress, making robes at Wat (temple) Hua Rin (located in Thailand’s northern Chiang Mai Province),” Manit said, with a winsome smile. “She earns about Baht100 ($US2.50) a day which, added to my own income, allowed me to complete primary school and enter a vocational training school, where I learn cooking.”

It was also at the temple where Manit learned her flower-arranging skills, making garlands and bouquets for festivals and special occasions, also earning about Baht100 per day to support her mother and siblings. “People these days must have flower arrangements for weddings and other ceremonies,” said the earnest little girl.

With a wisdom far beyond her tender years, no doubt tempered by her hardships, she said, “Even people who are rough and ill-mannered can change their nature when they look at flowers,” adding as an after-thought, “Women are attracted to flowers, too...our hearts go with flowers.”

She also learned classical Thai dancing and helped with cooking at the temple. “I am only small, but my hands are strong and I use them to help our family,” she said, displaying finely-formed hands and slim, long fingers.

“My teacher Ms Pranee was a great source of help and consolation during those grim years,” Manit recalled recently. Ms Pranee told me to give mama as much support as I could. “We - mum and I - became very close during that time,” Manit remembered. “Being close to mum showed her that, even at my young age, I accepted things as they were.”

“Do you like doing work where you can use your hands?” Manit was asked. Her profound reply was an insight into a determined, strong mind: “I’m good at things where I can use my hands. It’s like things that endure have colours that are soft. By using our hands, we can do things that our minds can’t achieve. When it comes from my own hands I feel proud. It’s the result of my own skill and the money I earn makes mum happy and helps us all,” she answered.

HIV/AIDS looms on the horizon for these happy children

I could not help but reflect how care-free and easy my own upbringing had been: a life with healthy parents, good circumstances and a rosy future. A life full of laughter and joy where daily necessities were taken for granted - or, even, as a birth-right, through having had the good fortune to be born in a prosperous, stable society.

On the contrary, many of the very basic needs are simply just not available to a huge number of poor and marginalized people in Thailand, especially those in the disadvantaged north and north-eastern regions. In my childhood, the most basic of resources, water, for example, came from faucets - an endless flow of clean, clear water, even hot or cold, at the turn of a tap. In a number of Thailand’s regions, for many, life-giving water for consumption, hygiene and crops is a dubious-looking brown colour, coming from a bucket carried a long distance.

I was considerably chastened by the circumstances and tragedy which enveloped this sweet child - now a teenager - who, like her mother, is totally innocent and who, as she said it so poignantly, “I am the medicine to treat my mother”. She wanted to save enough money from her various after-school activities - “to finish building the house so that mum will be happy.”

Manit’s mother found peace and friendship at Wat Hua Rin, whose abbot, Athikarn Thanawat Tekapanyo, affectionately known as Luang Pi Daeng, ministers to the AIDS-inflicted and AIDS-affected through the temple’s AIDS-support project. The temple is located in the Tung Sa Tok sub-district, San Patong District of Chiang Mai Province, in the northern region of Thailand where HIV/AIDS is most prevalent.

Manit’s suffering has endowed her with a physical and inner strength which has not gone un-noticed by authorities. In her darkest days, she was the school ‘dunce’, but her courage and determination shone through and, in October this year, Manit had made such progress that she was selected as the Thai delegate to the Sixth International Congress on AIDS, held at Melbourne, sponsored by the UN Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS.

She noted that the help and guidance from Abbot Luang Pi Daeng, her teacher and many other understanding people gave her the confidence and determination rise above life’s problems to such an extent that she is now an AIDS educator to her age group.

Manit’s message to the AIDS Congress is that she wants, “Other teenagers to learn from my experience - whether affected by HIV/AIDS or not. They should never give up... but fight and act wisely to move on and live a normal life,” she counsels her peer group.

Perhaps, in the near future, with her obvious abilities, Manit could be eligible for an upcoming Youth Career Development Programme, a joint collaboration between UNICEF, leading hotels and the Royal Thai Government. In its seven years of operations, almost 330 disadvantaged young girls from the north and north-east have graduated, proficient in the hotel and hospitality industry, to go forward into productive, fulfilling lives, far removed from the spectre of a tragic future.

Facing a grim future as victims of HIV/AIDS-afflicted parents

Another outstanding case of a youngster rising above HIV/AIDS-inflicted adversity is 17-year-old Thai boy Khomsan Sangsuengmoo. When aged only 15, Khomsan was selected, together with a teenaged girl from Uganda, to represent 13 million AIDS orphans world-wide at the AIDS Orphans Symposium. Held at the United Nations New York Headquarters on World AIDS Day, 1 December, 1999, the gathering of more than 800 people, including heads of state, was supported by UNICEF and the UN Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS.

Khomsan Sangsuemoon, who had never before left his village in Chiang Rai’s Mai Chan District in the north-east of Thailand, drawing strength from his tragic life fearlessly addressed the symposium with a message heard loud and clear around the world.

This brave, sad boy, with the quiet voice and the self-effacing demeanour brought on by his suffering and loneliness, informed an emotionally-charged assembly that, “AIDS had killed the two people I love most - my parents”. The 15-year-old Grade 8 student’s plea, presented to the world with a maturity belying his youth, was a request, on behalf of all the children who share his fate, including one million HIV-positive in Thailand, for simply “some support and opportunity”.

Khomsan had lost his surviving parent when his father succumbed to the disease. He was only 12 then and had not even known his mother who died from AIDS-related complications before his first birthday.

As with almost all facets of life - whether from the western viewpoint or in a country like Thailand - it is information and education which are the keys to understanding any given topic - even the most controversial. Abbot Luang Pi Daeng soon learned when he launched his AIDS-support project six years ago that he had to convince the local and provincial authorities, the community doctors, nurses, teachers and staff of the local administration, to accept HIV/AIDS victims as REAL people, able to work and contribute to the community.

Wat Hua Rin has been exemplary and its AIDS/HIV assistance programmes have been a blueprint for many others in the region. The abbot himself, upon the death of his own mother, went as a child to live and study at the temple and wanted to repay the community. The Prasanjai Group (literally meaning ‘collective will’), which he established to offer shelter to infected women, has been highly successful. His campaign of education and information throughout all echelons of the community is paying handsomely and, as a result, said the abbot, “There has been a reduction of HIV cases and those already infected now have a better quality of life.”

The abbot believes that, whether in the school environment or the community at large, ostracism and discrimination stem from a lack of information, rather than any inbred hostility. As long as people, young or old, do not have access to the factual information about AIDS and its transmission, these prejudices will always exist.

Unlike many western societies, where individual rights are protected and discrimination is forbidden by law, Thailand, even under the new Constitution safeguarding these personal freedoms, is only slowly accepting a legal approach. Rather, it is the age-old traditions of compassion and sympathy, coupled to an understanding of the magnitude of the problem, which will help alleviate the stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS and perhaps in the long-term, help eradicate the disease altogether.

The HIV/AIDS problem is immense and will not go away. Much assistance is needed for the “hidden sufferers” - the innocent children - and, thus, it is essential to implement HIV education programmes BEFORE any parental death occurs.

All available resources - financial, human and technical - must be brought to the front-line of what is, basically, a battle for the safety and well-being of future generations.

UNICEF will continue to lead the fight against HIV/AIDS.