Beyonce Aber (L), her mother Saida Adokorach and granny Lakot Evelyn in Lanyalwala village, Laguti Sub-County in Pader District – Photo by Dominic Ochola
A nine-year-old girl born with HIV in Pader District is living in misery after being abandoned by her own father. The minor now lives with her mother and grandmother in a dilapidated grass-thatched hut in Lanyalwala village, Aruu North County.
Born with the virus in 2012, the girl’s parents never learnt about her condition until her health drastically emaciated at three months. Later, she was diagnosed with HIV. From that time, her father moved on, abandoning both the wife and daughter, before forcing them out of his home.
Faced with difficulty, the mother returned to her family home, where they lived with no appropriate shelter, clothing, access to healthcare, education or even food. This hardship pushed the mother into another relationship in 2016, abandoning the child at her grandmother’s home.
In 2019, faced with tough conditions to fend for the sick child, the grandmother says she accompanied the girl to her family to plead with the father to consider taking custody of his child or channel the requisite education, feeding and medical support to no avail.
Ketty Oyella, one of the relatives of the ailing child says the father declined to take responsibility for the daughter, forcing the granny to abandon the child at her father’s home.
The girl says while at her father’s home, her step-mother and siblings could throw away her tin of Antiretroviral medicines into the pit latrine, and never wanted her to sleep in their house, eat with them or play close to them.
A year later, the father stealthily sent the child back to the granny without any help, and never followed up about her condition, situation and needs. The granny, now aged 60, says she has been struggling to walk with her to Laguti Health centre III, a distance of eight kilometres and sometimes to Acholibur Health Centre III, located about 12 kilometres away to access Antiretroviral Therapy, every month.
But while she gets the medicines, the family is struggling to cope. The Minor explains that the medicines are too strong to be swallowed on an empty stomach and that often times she experiences hearing difficulty, something that her doctors say is caused by the side effects of the drugs she is swallowing.
Meanwhile, the mother says she developed a misunderstanding with her second husband with whom she produced two more children, who are also living with HIV, and returned to the granny’s home.
The family is now appealing to good Samaritans to come to their rescue to construct for them any form of shelter and provide for them food relief to help them survive through the difficult moment.
The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS – UNAIDS, the main advocate for accelerated, comprehensive and coordinated global action on the HIV/AIDS pandemic estimates that children below the age of 15 accounts for 11 per cent of the 1.6 million Ugandans living with HIV.
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