Bahrain AIDS Patients Receive Free Treatment

UmBassil is unlike other engaged women. Instead of planning her wedding she is wondering where she will have her baby. She is not pregnant but she knows that Bahrain’s maternity hospitals will not admit her because she is HIV positive. The 26 year old, who refuses to allow HIV to stop her from living her life to the fullest, is bothered by the prospect of being forced to deliver her baby in a country other than her own.

“I have come to terms with artificial insemination and caesarean section, to protect my future husband and baby from contracting the virus, but I cannot accept that I have to deliver far away from my country and family members,” she told IPS.

UmBassil contracted the virus a few months ago from her previous fiancee who initiated unprotected sex. The two were married according to mutaaa or the temporary marriage custom prevalent in many Arab countries, which does not have legal sanction but is socially accepted.

All Bahraini citizens infected with HIV are treated free under the government-run program.

A total of 42 women like UmBassil have tested positive in Bahrain after unprotected sex with their infected fiancees or husbands.

In Bahrain, there is much ignorance around the disease, even among health professionals, she told IPS. Doctors refuse to do an invasive caesarean section for HIV positive women, even though it reduces the risk of their babies contracting the virus. But hospitals do admit them for normal deliveries.

Infected Bahraini women face far more discrimination than the men who are responsible for bringing HIV into homes in this patriarchal society.

“There are 180 living HIV/AIDS patients, including 42 women, and they are few compared with Bahrain’s population that exceeded 1 million at the end of 2008. Most of the women contracted the virus through sexual relations mainly with their infected husbands,” Al Jowder said.

“We advice the female to not conceive and tell her about the best family planning methods, but if they insist, then we monitor their pregnancies and put them on [AZT] medication  to save the babies,” she explains. Pregnant women are prescribed the drug, which is administered free for all Bahraini citizens, from the fourth month of pregnancy.

HIV positive mothers delivered more than 10 healthy babies naturally in the last 20 years. In five cases the women were not on AZT. The drug reduces to 2 percent the chances of babies contracting the infection from their mothers.

UmBassil has been told that the best maternity facilities for HIV infected pregnant women are available in Egypt and Lebanon. But she is worried about how she and her fiancée would be able to afford the high cost of treatment.

So far, she has kept her HIV status a secret from everybody except her current fiancée, therapists and medical groups.

“It is hard for me to hide such a horrible fact, but I have no option as my in-laws might force my fiancee to dump me,” she said.

Fear of social prejudice has forced UmAli, an AIDS activist “outside my country,” from publicizing her 15-year-old HIV status at home. She has not told her friends or relatives in case they refuse to let her into their homes.

Her husband, a reformed drug addict who campaigns, like her, for Bahrain’s HIV/AIDS community in international fora, infected her.

“I’m an AIDS-fighting activist outside my country as there I feel free to fight for my right and defend HIV/AIDS patients. At home I have to put up with maltreatment and ignorance,” says UmAli.

She says she is very close to her sisters, whom know of the virus, “but they don’t eat anything I make or from my dishes for fear of infection,” she said. “It hurts when the people dearest to you don’t accept a glass of water from you.”

Social prejudice is not the only problem for Shafiqa, who got the virus from her late husband 14 years ago.

The Bahrain government, through the National Program of the Sexually Transmitted Diseases, is planning to draft a law in an effort to protect the rights of HIV/ AIDS patients, including women, and eliminate discrimination.

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