Two rooms in the centre’s medical area are reserved for HIV-infected children. Despite a small area and a lack of equipment, the rooms are filled with smiles and songs all day. Pleasant and well-fed boys and girls are taught to fold their arms and bow to welcome guests.

I visited the centre on a nice summer day and was surrounded by lovely boys and girls. A child named Ngo Trieu Vi blew into my microphone and sang the song I am a pretty rose
… I will be the spring of the mother
  I will be the sunbeam of the father…

Like a knife, the song seemed to penetrate my heart as I was certain that their parents never knew that children are their springs and sunbeams. They either died of AIDS or abandoned their children after transmitting the lethal virus – HIV. 

Children of two misfortunes

That was what director of the centre Nguyen Thi Phuong told me when talking about the fate of these children.

“These children are living with HIV and have been abandoned by their parents,” said Ms Phuong, who has witnessed the plight of many miserable and unfortunate people at the centre.

“While other children enjoy boundless love from their parents and relatives, those at the centre are either abandoned or living with HIV,” said Ms Phuong, adding that they inherit nothing but the lethal virus from their parents.

Ten-year-old Nguyen Thi Thu Thuy – the oldest among a total of 29 unfortunate children at the centre – seemed to sense the dangers of the virus she was carrying in her body. She said she felt scared when someone talked about HIV/AIDS and death. Her father died of this incurable disease and her mother was addicted to drugs. She confided that she herself experienced the social stigma that comes as a result of the viral infection.

Another boy - Duy Anh - was abandoned at the Vietnam-Japan Hospital last July when he was three years old. Hospital doctors could never forget the abandoned child wailing endlessly, calling for his grandmother, mother and elder brother in the hospital that day. One month after being taken to the centre, his health has improved significantly thanks to the heartfelt assistance of his adopted mothers at the centre. He is still too small to remember the day when his grandmother took him to the hospital and never came back to pick him up.

Like other children, these children have the right to go to school and all wish their dreams will come true. In the 2005-2006 school year, the centre asked the Ba Vi District’s Department of Education and Training and local primary schools to accept these children. The proposal was welcomed by the district department, but it received strong negative reactions from parents of ordinary pupils. 

Vietnam now has approximately 8,500 children living with HIV and 22,000 orphans abandoned by their parents who died of full blown AIDS. Most of them face social stigma, are treated unequally and not allowed to attend school.

An unintentional scheme
The kindergarten for HIV-infected children at the centre was not established as it should be in a conventional way, said Ms Phuong. The story began in 2001 when the Tu Liem District Centre for malnourished children found a child HIV-positive. The centre was afraid that the child could spread the deadly virus to other children and decided to send the child to Ms Phuong’s centre in the hope that nurses there could care for the child. Fortunately, the child received parental care and love from women living with HIV at the centre.

The centre decided to receive and care for orphans and HIV-infected children, and it made a proposal to the Hanoi Department of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs. The proposal was then welcomed. 

After five years, the centre’s kindergarten has received more than 40 HIV-infected children. During that time, nurses who directly cared for these children witnessed not a few heartrending deaths. But above all, they were filled with joy when tests of several other children subjected to correct treatment proved negative for HIV.

For these nurses, monthly salary and additional State allowance is nothing. It is with their boundless love for these children that they have decided to stay on at the centre.

“The feeling of being a mother and doing useful things persuaded them to devote their lives for the children,” said Lam Uyen Nhi – a Miss Beach – who was infected with HIV after a period of drug addiction and prostitution.  

The message of humankind
Saying goodbye to these children, I could not forget what Nhi had told me before I left. “I feel like death warmed up, so I have to struggle to live and care for unfortunate children. I like to see my three-year-old son grow. He is too small to begin a parentless life,” Nhi said, bursting out into tears.

Leaving the centre, the innocent, angelic eyes obsessed me. I did not dare to think that one day these eyes will close forever like other children with similar plights.

Perhaps I would ceaselessly cry if I did not realise how joyful Miss Beach feels about her coming return to her hometown to see her relatives and friends in the central coastal city of Nha Trang. Nhi said she was really happy when she received many supportive letters and phone calls from her relatives, friends and unfamiliar people following her appearance on a Television programme.

“My mother decided to welcome me and my son back,” Nhi said, with eyes full of hope and confidence in her life ahead. 

This is also the message of humankind “Open our arms for HIV carriers” and, more importantly, “Do not let HIV-infected children become the victims of stigma.”

Thu Thuy