Study: parents with HIV avoid some contact (with their children)

[truthpusher]

http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=42774e64454499d2

Study: parents with HIV avoid some contact

Big News Network.com
Tuesday 8th February, 2005 (UPI)

A study by the RAND Corp. of Santa Monica, Calif., suggested Monday more than a quarter of HIV-infected parents avoid physical contact with their children.

Researchers said parents avoid hugging or kissing from fear of transmitting the disease or of catching an infection from the children.

The RAND study involved interviews with 344 parents receiving health care for HIV in the United States. The researchers found 36.1 percent of HIV-infected patients interviewed felt at least a little fear and 19 percent felt moderate fear of transmitting HIV to their children.

Fourteen percent of parents reported at least a moderate fear and 41.7 percent reported at least a little fear of catching infections from their children. A total 27.9 percent avoided certain types of interactions with their children.

story:
http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=42774e64454499d2

Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine:
http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/short/159/2/173

[bitchkitty]

1. Very sad -

Especially since HIV can't be transmitted by a hug, and hugs are what you need if you're seriously ill.

[xchrom]

2. i can imagine that it isn't that they don't know

it can't be transmitted through simple affectionate contact -- but the internalized stigma prevents it.

[mudderfudder77]

3. Tragic. n/t

[Trillo]

4. Some parents simply avoid contact, even if they are healthy. n/t

[Vitruvius]

5. That's how it was with TB up thru the 1940s at least; parents with TB

didn't hug or even breathe in the direction of their children; my Mother's Mother had TB and -- once she knew she had it -- avoided all physical contact with her children until the day she died of it in 1934.

And TB is making a comeback -- in drug resistant form -- in poor and third world countries. Why? Because the governments of the rich countries basically don't give a damn. Just like with AIDS in poor and third world countries. And someday we may all pay a terrible price for this neglect; in it's heyday, TB hit not just the poor, but the middle class as well. Like Grandmother.

[shadowknows69]

6. I could see not wanting to touch your HIV infected child

If you were ill with something and didn't want to task his/her immune system, but if parents are truly harboring these fears for their own safety then education about the disease still hasn't been thorough enough in this country. It speaks of a sad state of humanity when parents start considering their own welfare over that of their children.