Date: Thu, 12 Jan 1995 19:12:00 +0100
From: JELICA.TODOSIJEVIC@ZAMIR-BG.ZTN.ZER.DE (Jelica Todosijevic)


Since 1987, 241 persons have died of AIDS in Serbia. According to the
latest information there are 298 cases of full blown AIDS of whom the
greatest number is drug addicts 206 (69%), then  heterosexuals 29 (10%),
haemophiliacs 16 (6%), bisexuals 21 (7%), and finally homosexuals 8
(3%). Three cases were caused by HIV-infected blood transfusions, four
children were born by HIV-infected mothers and the cause is unknown at
11 persons.
Please notice that very few people in Serbia admit that they are
homosexuals, and that these figures might not represent the real situation
of HIV infection among homosexuals. 
The following article was published in the Women in Black Notebooks
(women's peace organization from Belgrade), in January in Belgrade. 
The author is a member of Arkadija,  Lesbian and Gay Lobby - Belgrade
and a peace activist fully engaged in AIDS matters in Serbia.

                         Jelica Todosijevic - Arkadija


                         ********************

                         AIDS - What was that?

>From the way that the World AIDS Day was (not)promoted, it seems that
the illness which has been officially pronounced as the greatest danger for
human kind, doesn't exist in Serbia. Or at least our government and media
doesn't want to accept that it exists. From time to time the number of
people deceased, ill and infected by the HIV virus is announced publically
and that is all. That is the end of the state's care and solidarity for society.
HIV infected people are also living here, in Serbia, not far from the
battlefields, in the country overwhelmed by criminality, in an environment
blinded by hate and rage. They are living without telling anyone the real
cause of their dying, trying to spare their families of torture and agony
through which they themselves had to go. A lot of them are committing
suicide to eliminate the suffering and the horror of dying from AIDS in
Serbia, now!
There are no associations, organizations or groups in Serbia today which
are working with AIDS, giving information about the disease and about
the ways of prevention. There are no forms of supporting or counselling
for HIV positive or AIDS diseased people. There are no humanitarian
foundations which would provide financial aid to them, no real hospitals
to treat them, no public educational programs on AIDS. Never was a
single concert, sport's game or exhibition organized for the AIDS diseased
benefit. In Serbia condoms were never available in public places and free 
distribution of syringes is for us equal to science fiction.
There is only one institution which is accepting AIDS infected people for
stationary treatment - The sixth ward of the Belgrade's Infectious and
Tropical Disease Clinic. The best picture of the conditions in the ward is
reflected in the following statement of one of its patients: "... people are
lying and dying by the broken windows, they don't have a decent toilet,
dining room, plaster is falling of the walls and ceiling, pipes are leaking,
there are no light bulbs, no bed spreads, food is awful... Practically, you
are sentenced to death, laying in the box helpless - waiting.  There, on the
clinic, everybody is together: children, women, men. They could at least
separate kids from that horror, drug addicts and dying people. Nowhere
else can these conditions be found, except here on the 6th ward where the
corpse stays in the bed for whole day right beside the other patients."
The medical staff of this clinic is doing everything possible to help their
patients, although it is beyond their power to operate without
necessary equipment and medications. But there are much more examples
of medical staff being hostile and unprofessional with their patients.
In Nis [a town in south-eastern Serbia], the medical staff of
the hospital refused to perform dialysis on the HIV positive patient. In the
same city,  a young man found out that he was HIV positive in the most
horrible way. His doctor opened the envelope with the results and started
to scream.  She threw him out and demanded for her office to be
disinfected.
In the centre of Belgrade a man was thrown out of his apartment after his
neighbours found out that he was sick from AIDS.  The phone on the 6th
Ward of Infectious Clinic doesn't work, because the phone company men
don't want to come and fix the handle. 
This is the picture of a society in which people answer street surveys with
statements that they are not interested in AIDS and that the infected asked
for that because they are just - "faggots, junkies and hookers".
This situation remains despite the numerous cries of diseased and medical
staff for help, in spite of the scary number of new cases of HIV infection.
Arkadija - Gay and Lesbian Lobby will try, with its modest opportunities,
to change this poor situation, influence the public opinion and moderate
the consequences of this dreadful illness which is endangering all of us.  

                                                  Bojan Aleksov, 1994.
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