quote:
Some people with HIV/Aids in Papua New Guinea are being buried alive by their relatives, a health worker says.
Margaret Marabe said families were taking the extreme action because they could no longer look after sufferers or feared catching the disease themselves. Ms Marabe said she saw the "live burials" with her own eyes during a five-month trip to PNG's remote Southern Highlands.
PNG is in the grip of an HIV/Aids epidemic - the worst in the region.
Officials estimate that 2% of the six million population are infected, but campaigners believe the figure is much higher.
HIV diagnoses have been rising by around 30% each year since 1997, according to a UN Aids report.
Ignorance
Margaret Marabe, a known local activist in PNG, carried out an awareness campaign in the Tari area of the Southern Highlands earlier this year.
"I saw three people with my own eyes. When they got very sick and people could not look after them, they buried them," she told reporters.
She described how one person called out "mama, mama" as the soil was being shovelled over their head.
Villagers told her that such action was common, she said.
HIV/Aids is mostly spread in the country through heterosexual intercourse, and polygamy, rape and sexual violence are widespread.
Those caught up in the epidemic are often thought to be the victims of witchcraft.
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posted 31 August 2007 05:34 PM
