“There is no reason to hide if you are HIV positive.  You can still live normally if you want to.  We wanted people to know we are a normal family.”

                                                                     -Au Reyes

In a tiny corner of an urban-poor community in Makati City, away from dazzling huge buildings and the bustling financial district, lives a family of three who go by each day’s activity.

There’s really nothing peculiar about the Reyes family, Jack drives a second-hand tricycle, Au makes the rounds in the neighborhood to collect money for paluwagan.  She was able to buy a television set, refrigerator, radio and washing machine through this neighborhood savings scheme.  Their six year old daughter is now in Grade I.

The Reyeses may be poor, but each day, they appreciate life and their togetherness.  Theirs is not the typical poor family’s struggle to have food on their table or shelter above their heads.  They are striving to keep health and integrity.

Jack and Au Reyes are infected with AIDS.

When Au tested positive for HIV in 1993, her first reaction was: “It’s not true.  It can’t be me.  Only prostitutes, seamen and gays can have AIDS.”

Not convinced by the first AIDS test result, Au went to San Lazaro Hospital for second opinion.  There, doctors confirmed the first test result.  “ I couldn’t accept that I was sick.  I almost went mad and even tried killing myself,” she recalls.

Au’s suicidal tendency prompted the Precious Jewel organization to adopt her then three-year old daughter.

Au acquired HIV/AIDS when she had an ectopic pregnancy and had to undergo transfusion.  Of the six bags of blood transferred to her body none was tested with for any contagious disease.  She was seven months pregnant with her daughter when her first husband died of cardiac arrest.

Two years later, she met Jack who would be come to her lifetime partner.

“I fell in love with her because she’s beautiful and kind.  We were friends, and our friendship developed into romance after she lost her husband,” Jack recalls.

“I told him not to love me because I’m carrying an amulet,” Au teases him.

The two have since lived together.  Au gave birth to a baby girl in 1996.  Until that time, Jack did not know that Au was keeping a secret – something that she would only reveal when the baby got sick.

Their daughter was confined at the AIDS Pavilion of the San Lazaro hospital where Jack noticed something unusual.

“People there looked like they were dying.  I saw Sarah Jane Salazar who I thought saw on TV,” Jack remembers.  Au had kept her secret from her husband for a long time.  One day she mustered all her strength to reveal the truth to her husband.

I can’t describe what I felt then.  I was mad but didn’t know who to blame,” Jack says.

Out of shame, the couple and their daughter moved to Bahay Lingap in 1999.

Jack and Au knew how the society feels toward people living with HIV/AIDS, or PLHA.  But determined to help remove the stigma that obscures people’s perception of PLHAs, the couple came out in the open.  They delt being discriminated.  It was worse than they thought.  They were shunned by their families.

“We decided to lie low after that.  Our down payment for a room we wanted to rent was rejected when people saw us on TV.  There was so much discrimination everywhere,” says Au.

Au did not give up though.  She collected brochures about AIDS and how it gets transmitted.  She sent them to her family in Samar.  Now enlightened, Au’s relatives decided to accept her again.

Jack took the harder blow.  In 1999 he took his daughter to his relatives in Cavite.  One relative told the girl: “You’re too beautiful to have AIDS.”

Such insensitive comment upset Jack.  He vowed not to visit his family again.

Au was not spared from his family’s painful remarks. “They said she’s a traitor because she didn’t tell me she has AIDS before we live together,” he recalls.

Their stay at the Bahay Lingap, which shelters PLHAs was torture for them.  The Reyes family eventually decided to leave the shelter because the sight of patients slowly surrendering their last breath to AIDS was too much for them to bear.

“It was so depressing there.  You feel that there’s no life after AIDS,” said Au.

When the couple got married in 2000, the Reyeses left Bahay Lingap and moved to a community of “normal people,” braving heckles and facing discrimination.  Au began her stuffed toy business, which she had learned at the shelter.

Though donations from a non-government organization, the Reyeses were able to build a small house inside an urban-poor community.  The couple kne they could not hide forever at the shelter away from people;s prejudices and ignorance.

“There’s no reason to hide if you are HIV positive you can still live normally if you want to.  We wanted people to know that we are a normal family,” said Au.

They did the founds in the neighborhood, educating people about AIDS and assuring them that there is nothing to fear as long as one is being careful.  Eventually, their neighbors have accepted them.

“if our neighbors accepted us, I don’t see any reason while the whole society should not adopt the same attitude toward people living with AIDS,” comments Au.

However, besides the issue of people’s acceptance, Jack and Au also have to deal with the economic aspect of their health condition.  They know that time will come when their daughter will be orphaned.  Who will take care of her?

Sometimes Jack’s tricycle would bog down so he would have to park it and wait till money is available to fix it. Au’s own income from making and selling stuffed toys is unstable.  The astronomical cost of their medicines is making it worse.  Both jack and Au are taking anti-retroviral therapy which costs P1,500 a month for each of them. For cough and fever, cheaper brands of medicine won’t do for people with impaired immunity system.

Dr. Aurthur Jaucian, country program adviser of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS said the government can help people with HIV/AIDS live a normal life by offering them the means to continue living despite their situation.  Providing them a hpspice where they can be cared for while waiting for death is not enough,

“They can be offered education scholarships.  Adoption would also be an option.  The Department of Health can help a lot in terms of their medical care while the Department of Social Welfare and Development can also help in terms of dealing with orphans,” said Jaucian.

Unfortunately, the government doesn’t have any livelihood assistance prepared for people living with HIV/AIDS.  Most PLHAs lose their job when their employers find out their condition.

Joshua Formentera of the Positive Action Foundation Philippines Inc. says some financial institutions are hesitant to grant loans to PLHAs because they fear that they would die before they could even pay.

“Some of them would ask for a co-maker to act as guarantor in case something happens to the debtor.  It is also not easy to give livelihood assistance to PLHAs because you need to find their qualification and train them,” Formentera says.

There are now 1,733 Filipinos with HIV/AIDS.

Every month, the health department surveillance unit reports more than a hundred cases.  Experts says there could be between 10,000 to 30,000 others who may be afflicted with it but are not aware of it.

Life may be very difficult for PLHAs.  But for Au and Jack, unconditional love and staying together as a family can defeat the curse of the disease.  The couple plans to send their children to the same foster parent when they can no longer be with them.

The Reyeses would like to be a source of inspiration to those who are struggling with HIV/AIDS.  They made a quilt with a heart as a design for the Pinoy Plus Organization where the couple belongs.  Au said the heart symbolizes their unending love for each other.

“He loved me even though I kept my situation secret, and that love continues to be there despite AIDS,”  Au says.

Asked if she ever blamed God for her and her family’s situation, Au beamed and humbly said, “God doesn’t give disease but forgiveness.”

Published in Today last September 20, 2002