About 800 cases of AIDS were reported in Saudi Arabia last year of which 20 per cent were women who got AIDS either from tainted blood transfusions or their husbands
SAUDI Arabia is a country where you always feel safe and secure out on the streets even in the dead of night ... unless you are suffering from AIDS. Abdul Rahim Mahmoud, a 57-year-old Indonesian expatriate worker found this out when he went to Jeddah’s prestigious and expensive New Jeddah Clinic and Hospital. A blood test revealed that Abdul Rahim was HIV-Positive. Almost immediately, panic seized the hospital staff. Instead of treating him, the security staff removed the semi-conscious Mahmoud and dumped him on Jeddah’s busy Palestine Street.
There was a public outcry and all newspapers carried the story about the inhumane treatment meted out to Abdul Rahim. A few weeks later, a statement was issued by the Ministry of Health. A senior official, Dr Madani, appealed to the community to treat AIDS patients humanely. He also said that about 800 cases of AIDS were reported in Saudi Arabia last year of which 20 per cent were women who got AIDS either from tainted blood transfusions or their husbands.
Many believe that the real figures are much higher as there is a general mistrust of anything official. But it is a step in the right direction that the region is breaking the silence on AIDS — a problem that, for a while, did not exist officially. You only heard about it in ripples and hearsay. But you knew that something was happening. All foreign workers have been required to take an AIDS test once they enter the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). UNAIDS says that at least half-a-million people are suffering from AIDS in the Arab world, though this region was always considered low prevalence. Around 83,000 people were infected last year. All Arab countries have reported an increase in the HIV/AIDS prevalence rate. In Saudi Arabia, too, according to Dr Madani, the number of HIV Positive patients went up from 350 last year to 800 this year.
There is a lot of ignorance about AIDS in the Arab world. The majority considers it to be a death sentence; therefore being kind and humane towards an HIV-Positive person is a lot to ask for. Abdul Rahim was not left on the streets to die. The attention he got guaranteed him good treatment. He is now under treatment in another hospital in Jeddah. But not all HIV-Positive patients have been so lucky.
It is the rule in the KSA that if a foreign worker contracts AIDS, he is deported back to his own country quite unceremoniously. An acquaintance of mine, an American woman who married a Saudi man and lived in the KSA for over 20 years, always told me that she would never give up her American nationality even though she loved living in Saudi Arabia.
Therefore, I was genuinely surprised when my acquaintance told me one day that she had gotten Saudi nationality. When I inquired why she had a change of heart, she told me after a long pause that her husband had tested HIV-Positive and she was going through mandatory tests every month which were required by the government. “If I test positive, they will deport me to United States, so as a precaution I acquired the Saudi nationality. That way, I won’t be deported.”
I was shocked for the woman had always told me how much her husband loved her. Some of us were envious of all the loving attention she got from her husband. It seems that he was very fond of women from the Far-East and frequented massage parlours and houses of ill-repute. All the loving-husband stories we heard were perhaps a ploy to fool his wife.
My acquaintance told me that she had luckily tested negative for AIDS and had taken a divorce from her Saudi husband. Later, he went to another Arab country and remarried!
Saudis who get AIDS have to register themselves with the police and keep them informed of their whereabouts whenever they travel. This is done to check the disease from spreading. They are also retired from their jobs on health grounds and receive pension and full medical care. Their identities are usually not made public to save them from being victimized. But very few receive humane treatment from their relatives.
Making figures public and appealing to the masses for humane treatment is not enough. The authorities have to educate the people about AIDS, specially on how to avoid it. They have to understand how it spreads and how to take care of an AIDS patient. Most patients themselves do not realize they have AIDS. My American acquaintance told me that her Saudi husband was always suffering from colds and fever and losing weight. He had even gone to the doctor many times, yet he was not diagnosed. “I was the one who suggested to him that he take an AIDS test because that is what the symptoms looked like to me. He was very reluctant, but when he took it, he was grateful because it was still in the early stages.”
AIDS is something too serious to cover up or take lightly, and it certainly cannot be ignored, not at the rate at which it is spreading.
