PESHAWAR, Dec 16: Speakers at a seminar here have expressed concern over the treatment meted out to HIV/Aids patients, especially women and children.

"Women and children living with HIV/Aids are looked down upon even by their close relatives," said Dr Muzaffar Tareen, who works at the Khyber Teaching Hospital. The seminar is entitled "Women and Children Living with HIV/Aids".

According to him, women who had got the disease from their husbands and fathers needed to be treated with love. He said that a two-year-old girl from Parachinar faced extreme hostility from her close relatives.

He said that her father, who worked as a driver in the UAE, had been deported after being diagnosed to be suffering from Aids three years ago. The person, he said, arrived in his native town.

"As the UAE government doesn't inform the government about such deportations, so he transmitted the deadly infection to his wife and later on his baby was also diagnosed as positive," he said.

According to him, there was a need for the government to ask the UAE government to inform it about such cases before deporting them so that the government could communicate the relevant information to the relatives of the deportees regarding their disease.

Secondly, he added that a campaign should be launched at the community level to spread a message across that the HIV/Aids positive women and children should be treated kindly.

"These women and children get the infection without any fault of theirs. So treating them harshly makes no sense," said Dr Tareen. He also expressed concern over the non-availability of genuine data regarding the number of HIV/Aids infected women and children in the country, which could run into thousands.

On the occasion, some women and their children also narrated their woeful tales. They informed the participants that they learnt about their diseases after the deaths of their husbands and fathers.

"I was all right three years ago. My husband, who had been deported from Dubai, was seriously ill. We took him to a doctor in the city, where he was diagnosed to have had got full blown AIDS," said a woman from Tall in district Hangu.

She said that her husband died a month later, and she gave birth to a baby girl after a few months of her husband's death. "Now, my daughter and I are HIV positive. Our family members and neighbours have distanced themselves from us," said the 40-year-old woman, having her daughter in her lap.

Dr Tareen said that a person from Swat district had been diagnosed as HIV positive 10 years ago. Two years back, his wife died of AIDS and the person remarried one year later. "Now, his second wife is also HIV positive," he said.