By Tenzin Dickyi
New Delhi
His Holiness the Dalai Lama at the 46th founding anniversary of the TCV strongly emphasized on the need to contain the spread of AIDS in Tibet. He urged those infected with HIV to seek medical-help and not to bury themselves under any kind of embarrassment or guilt. He further asked for love and care to the AIDS patients from the general public.
Considering AIDS as a huge threat to the Tibetan community in the near future, a Japanese lady called Akemi Takahashi gathered much energy to work on this issue before its too late. She says that “Tibetans still view AIDS as an alien disease, rather than a clear and present reality. Therefore I found it very vital to educate and train few selected people who have the general background on this disease so that they can later impart these knowledge to the public in a much skilled way”.
A workshop is organized and sponsored by Akemi Takahashi here in New Delhi on HIV/AIDS. The workshop started on 12th March and it will go on till 23rd March. There are 6 participants for this workshop from various Tibetan organizations and they are; 2 Tibetan Men-tse-Khang doctors from Dharamsala, 2 staffs from Kunphen Centre for Substance Dependence in Dharamsala, a nurse from Delek Hospital who is the incharge of Public Health and a member from Tibetan Youth Congress.
This workshop is implemented by Sahara Centre for Residential Care and Rehabilitation. It is an organization whose mission is to empower people facing difficult situations due to substance use and HIV/AIDS. They provide opportunity and empowerment to them through a variety of comprehensive, user friendly treatment options and social reintegration programs.
Focussing on various issues related to HIV/AIDS, the instuctors are providing the participants immense knowledge and skills on how to deal with such patients who are infected by this disease. Each day of the workshop has something new to learn with various kind of tactics and detail study.
Dr. Tenzin Namdul, one of the participants for the workshop says, “Many people are unaware that they are infected with HIV and it’s dreaful to see many Tibetans specially youths being ignorant of it. With increased numbers of AIDS patients in the Tibetan cummunity in the last few years, statistics tell their own sordid tale”.
Besides these lectures and talks, the workshop also have lots of discussion and interactions in between. There are also exposure visit to various health care centres and other HIV/AIDS related organizations who takes care of related patients.
While AIDS is a high-risk disease it can be prevented if proper precautions are taken and greater awareness meted out to those who are ignorant of it. Mr. Tenpa C. Samkar, Health Secretary in one of his interview said, “AIDS is not a crime and nor are those infected with HIV criminals. People need to be more loving and compassionate towards HIV/AIDS patients”.
Ignorance can play a great havoc in human’s life therefore educating and informing all the people can only trim down the spread of this disease.
