‘I was treated as an untouchable’](BBC NEWS | South Asia | 'I was treated as an untouchable')
Pakistani Shukria Gul, a 33-year-old, HIV positive mother, explains why she was motivated to try to combat ignorance about the disease through a centre she set up in Lahore.
My husband had spent three years working in South Africa. After a car accident, he was given contaminated blood.
In 1995, he became ill and we found out that he was HIV positive. In fact, by then, he had full-blown Aids.
He was in the last stages of the illness and died soon afterwards. He never learnt of the diagnosis.
I was tested at the time and found out that I, too, was HIV positive. My children were also tested but, thank God, they tested negative. They were only little then, but now my daughter is 12-years-old and my son is 10.
- **Giving hope **
When my husband and I were diagnosed, even our doctor didn’t have any proper information about the disease. I suffered a kind of double crisis.
My husband’s condition was getting worse and the doctors were very unhelpful. When he died, they even told the press, which created many problems for me.
There was a lot of ignorance about the illness and people in there area where I lived behaved as though it was dangerous and contagious. They treated me like some kind of untouchable.
My family didn’t have much information either, but they were still very supportive.
I went to Islamabad to get information and then I set up a non-governmental organisation called New Light. I wanted to raise awareness, to help people diagnosed with HIV and to give them a platform.
I wanted to tell them that this diagnosis does not mean their lives are over, they are not dead, they need to live with HIV.
People’s attitudes are changing, but very slowly. We conducted a workshop in Peshawar, where the population is much more conservative.
**A mullah at the workshop was irritated by our talk of sexual contact. He said: “All HIV patients should just be shot, that’ll solve the problem”. **
On the last day of the workshop when I revealed that I was HIV positive, he stood up and apologised to me for what he’d said.
Ignorance never solved the problem. I stand behind Mrs Gul’s effort in awareness of HIV.