- GAZA - Adel says his life has become hell since he discovered his
friend Hassan had AIDS. The two men were among dozens of Palestinians who,
while working in Israel, had sex with prostitutes.
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- "Hassan and I were close friends,
we were going to the same places," said Adel, 40. "In addition,
many of us used drugs," he added. "I feel certain I have the
same disease."
-
- AIDS carries such a stigma in Islamic
society it is called the "Anger of God" and Palestinians who
have the disease sometimes feel they have no place to turn.
-
- "You can imagine the situation in
which someone feels he is a community danger, a stigmatized person. He
will wish to die before anybody else gets to know," said Abdel-Jabar
al-Tibi, general director of public health in the Gaza Strip.
-
- Adel was afraid to see a doctor. "How
would people talk to me if they know I have the disease? I don't want to
know it myself," he said. After a while he stopped visiting Hassan,
unable to cope what his own future might hold.
-
- For some years AIDS was hardly a phenomenon
in conservative Palestinian society, where sex outside marriage and drugs
are taboo. "In our conservative community AIDS was not a serious,
frightening matter because of our religion and tradition that kept Muslims
away from the cause of the disease," Tibi said.
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- Aids Takes Hold in Palestinian Areas
-
- Now, however, the virus is spreading
through indigenous transmission, doctors say, indicating AIDS has taken
hold. "Now there are registered indigenous cases from inside where
the virus could be transferred through sexual relations including legal
ones (marriages)," Asad Ramlawi, director of preventive health care,
told Reuters.
-
- Unprotected sex, contaminated needles
used by drug addicts and infected blood are the main sources of AIDS, though
all blood used in the Palestinian territories these days is AIDS-free,
Ramlawi said.
-
- Palestinian doctors say that since 1988
there have been 40 registered cases of AIDS or the HIV virus that causes
it among the 2 million people of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. "About
half of the 40 are still alive," Ramlawi said.
-
- Another 16 patients are in Arab East
Jerusalem, living under Israeli rule. Ramlawi believes many more cases
have yet to be uncovered.
-
- The Palestinian Health Ministry pays
for medicine and sophisticated tests conducted at the AIDS Center at Israel's
Hadassah hospital. The medical cocktail, which helps contain the disease,
costs about $12,000 per person a year.
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- Officials Estimate Up to 200 Cases
-
- Shlomo Maayan, the AIDS Center director
at Hadassah who has worked with Ramlawi for years on Palestinian cases,
estimated a total of 100 to 200 cases in Gaza and the West Bank, including
East Jerusalem.
-
- Maayan told Reuters he did not know how
widespread AIDS is among Palestinians. "We can assume that for the
general population the prevalence of HIV is very, very low." He and
Ramlawi conducted a study on 2,000 healthy women in West Bank delivery
rooms in 1995 and found no evidence of HIV, he said.
-
- A test of blood banks in 1991-92 showed
Palestinian HIV prevalence at 0.004 percent as opposed to 0.006 percent
in Israel at the time. Among Israel's 6 million population, 1,800 people
are HIV positive and 400 have AIDS.
-
- Little is known about homosexuality in
a predominantly Islamic society where it is taboo.
-
- "Most of the cases are men who say
they got it through sex with women; however, the taboo of homosexuality
hides the fact that some of them are homosexuals," Maayan said. He
said he has two gay Palestinian patients who were infected in Cairo.
-
- "Since it is still a rare disease,
prejudice is prevalent. They always say it is a conservative society but
you should ask a Palestinian patient of mine who's gay, he could tell you
about the underground homosexual life in Cairo," Maayan said. "He
says it is like Amsterdam."
-
- He said several Palestinian gays had
encountered homosexual activity in Tel Aviv, "plus many Palestinians
came from the (Persian) Gulf states where prostitution is heavy."
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