LookAtVietnam – Despite big efforts, people still have been unable to entirely remove the barrier of discrimination which has been keeping many students away from schools.

The problem was that hundreds of parents of students were violently protesting the school’s decision to allow HIV-infected children from the Mai Hoa Children’s Centre to learn together with the other students of the school.

“I would rather keep my child at home than send him to school with HIV-infected children,” some of the parents said.

Facing the strong protest from the parents, nuns and children of Mai Hoa Children Centre had to return home in tears as they could not gain admittance to the school. The children could not understand what had happened and why they had had to return to home, while the nuns did not know what to say to them.

“They looked at us with abhorrence. Many of the parents did not allow their children to enter the school, while others hurriedly brought their children out of the school,” a nun said.

Just a few hours later, 229 of 269 applications for studying at the school were taken back as parents wanted to bring their children to other schools.

Representative from Mai Hoa Centre said that it got approval from the Cu Chi district People’s Committee to send the children to the primary school. However, they did not anticipate the strong protest from the parents.

Deputy Chairwoman of Cu Chi district Cao Thi Gai confirmed that she received two documents from Mai Hoa Centre ahead of the new school year, asking it to allow 15 children from Mai Hoa Centre to attend schools in the district.

Though saying that the parents behaved impolitely, Gai said that the district’s authorities had decided to continue organising classes at Mai Hoa Centre for the sick children to avoid a disruption in learning at An Nhon Dong Primary School.

The centre’s children felt sad that they would have to continue studying at the centre. “We are healthy. We have been well taught what to do to avoid affecting other students. However, the parents frightened us this morning,” a boy said.

Located 50 kilometres from the centre of HCM City, Mai Hoa is one of the big homes for HIV-infected children and terminal AIDS patients.

For years, classes for HIV-infected children have been organised right at the centre. However, in an effort to eliminate discrimination, the HCM City People’s Committee has allowed infected children to attend public schools to integrate with other children under the programme on taking care of HIV-infected and HIV/AIDS-influenced children.

Le Truong Giang, Deputy Chairman of the HCM City HIV/AIDS Prevention Committee, said that in order to help HIV-infected people integrate into society, it is necessary to obtain the sympathy from the community. Giang stressed that the support of people will help children avoid the pain of discrimination, which could kill them before the disease gets the chance.

He said that the HCM City Education and Training Department has been trying to support the programme by providing training courses to teachers and students in which they are taught how to avoid the spread of the disease.

Giang stressed that normal contact with infected children will not lead to disease transmission.

Representatives from Mai Hoa and Tam Binh Children Centre have also affirmed that people who have the proper awareness will not get the disease, adding that the nuns at the centres take care of the children every day and none of them have been infected.

In HCM City, there are some 6,000 HIV-infected children, but only seven percent of them are being taken care of at children’s centres. All the children at the centres can have medicine free of charge. Many of them are now learning at the 8^th grade level and they remain healthy.

VietNamNet/VNE