Separate school for HIV positive kids - boon or bane?

NAGPUR: A novel experiment of running a special school for HIV positive children here is embroiled in a bitter controversy and faces the prospect of being nipped in the bud.

Acting expeditiously on a request made by Sahara, an NGO working for the welfare of HIV positive people during a World AIDS Day function Dec 1, the Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) started the separate school the very next week - a record in itself.   

But even as the well-meaning officers of the civic body were in a self-congratulatory mood for being the country's first municipal corporation to take such an initiative, some other NGOs opposed the move, which they said violated the sacrosanct clause of confidentiality as regards victims of the dreaded affliction.   

While the protesting NGOs said sending the HIV positive kids to a separate school would reveal their status to the whole world leading to their open discrimination, proponents of the experiment argue that the children's status was already known in their localities and thus they were already suffering discrimination.

"The children were already leading a life of outcasts - most of them are orphans being ill-treated by their relatives, not being sent to school or properly fed, and shunned by the people in their localities," Milind Mane, a paediatrician and a municipal councillor who was instrumental in starting the school, said.

"Among the 28 children we enrolled in the school were a few whom the school teachers had either driven away or made to sit separately from other children," he said, adding that they would not only be educated in the special school but also be fed and administered medicines regularly.

Mane said children of HIV positive parents that suffer similar discrimination in spite of being negative for the disease would also be put in the special school, which is meant for children below 10 years of age. 

"The NMC authorities are also thinking of starting a residential school for these children from the next academic session," he claimed.

Supporting Mane's contention, municipal commissioner Sanjay Sethi told IANS that it was an exploratory move made in view of the children's peculiar predicament and that they would be eventually integrated to normal NMC schools.

Referring to a similar initiative taken by an NGO in Bangalore which did not meet any resistance, Sethi said it is unfortunate that a municipal corporation is criticised when it takes a bold initiative for the society's most afflicted lot.

"The idea of the school is on the lines of separate schools for physically or mentally challenged children or those of quarry workers," Sethi said, hastening to add that he was aware of the fundamentally different case of HIV positive kids.  

Additional municipal commissioner Atul Patne, who had accepted Sahara's request at the World AIDS Day function and started the school the next week, said other HIV positive children studying in normal NMC schools will continue to go to the same schools.   

While Milind Bhrushundi, a medical practitioner well-known for his work in the field of AIDS combat broadly agreed with the opponents of the move, he too said a sympathetic view should be taken in case of ill-treated children coming from the poor strata as they, with their status already known, would otherwise be worse off.

"Where the civic authorities erred was they did it with a lot of drum beating rather than doing it discreetly," he said. 

Countering the argument of Mane and civic authorities, Shashikala, an HIV positive woman working with an NGO called Sanjeevan, said the NMC should ensure that the children are sent to normal schools and not discriminated against instead of starting a separate school for them.

She also alleged that while civic authorities were taking some HIV positive children out of normal NMC schools and putting them into the special school, the office bearers of Sahara were luring their relatives with a promise of monthly dole.

"Though I have declared my status, I would not send my daughter, who is HIV negative, to the special school as the stigma she would thereby wear would ruin her life," she said. 

Shashikala said a decision was taken at a meeting of some NGOs Thursday to request the NMC authorities once again to withdraw the ill-conceived move, and, if they don't agree, explore legal ways to thwart it. "We will also petition the charity commissioner to cancel the registration of Sahara, which has tied up with NMC to run the school," she informed.