People take Sasha and Kolya as brothers. On the contrary, they are not related to each other. They were simply born by their HIV-positives mothers in the city of Norilsk about the same time. Their mothers abandoned them. The boys spent a few months in hospital prior to being sent to the Center for the Fight Against AIDS in Novosibirsk. Doctors confirmed the boys’ horrifying diagnoses after conducting a full examination. Then doctors faced a tough question: Where to put the kids next?
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“The number of abandoned HIV-positive children grew along with the number of their HIV-positive mothers,” says Galina Kosmynina, chief doctor of an orphanage for infants in the city of Sosnovoborsk. “A special team was formed in our institution in 2003. Pursuant to the instructions by the regional health department, HIV-positive infants are dispatched to our orphanage. The team has already taken care of 38 children. At the moment, we have 13 children including three with the confirmed diagnoses. All those children were born by mothers who are drug addicts, many have syphilis and hepatitis C,” says Kosmynina.
Sasha and Kolya were already 3 years old when they were brought to the Sosnovoborsk orphanage. They can stay at the orphanage only until they turn 4. Then they have to be settled somewhere else. Alas, no place has been found for them yet. Orphanages refuse to admit them. The staff of one orphanage promised to take every possible measure to keep HIV-positive children from being admitted to the institution.
There is a growing AIDS phobia in today’s Russia. Even adults refuse to realize that AIDS is essentially a sexually transmitted disease, and two other routes of spread are via infected blood or blood products. Many people believe that keeping infected patients at bay is the best way of prevention. The majority of children kept in the Sosnovoborsk orphanage are eventually found sound, and therefore their registration at medical institutions is canceled. The children are kept in the orphanage only because they are born by infected mothers and to be under the supervision of a practicing immunologist for the first 18 months of their life. Fortunately, AIDS is not always a hereditary disease. However, no Russian family has adopted a HIV-posited child. It is against the law in Russia to adopt a HIV-positive infant whose diagnosis has been confirmed.
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