AIDS patients in Gaza face isolation, humiliation
Several treatment programs are available to AIDS patients in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where they are treated as outcasts by society.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Umm Hamdan seemed hesitant when I extended my hand to her, saying, “People who know my condition rarely shake my hand.”
She felt the same about making coffee in her modest house. “I rarely do work that requires the use of my hands, like cooking, but I hug my children and grandchildren,” she said.
With these expressions, Umm Hamdan (a pseudonym) summed up the state of isolation she has been living in and the secret she has been hiding for 16 years. She is just one of the 11 known AIDS patients in the Gaza Strip. She caught the disease from her husband, who got infected while working in Israel. “I found out I had it in 1997, after I got pregnant with my daughter and had breast-fed her. Yet she was tested and I learned she was safe,” she said.
“When I first found out that I was infected with the virus, I broke down and cried. So did my husband. We were afraid for our other children, but after the test we discovered they were fine. My husband died around a year later,” Umm Hamdan recalled.
