School under fire for rejecting HIV positive student

Manama: A school in western Saudi Arabia has come under fire after it refused to allow a seven-year-old HIV-Positive student to continue his studies.

Mubarak Al Aseemi, the spokesperson for the education ministry, said that the school’s decision was a violation.

“There is nothing that prevents the student from attending classes,” he said, quoted by Saudi daily Al Sharq on Monday.

No comments were made by the administration of the school in Al Qunfudah regarding the decision against the first grader and its rejection of a medical report that explained that the student’s condition could not be transmitted to the other students.

The mother said that she was shocked by the decision and by the emotional and mental impact it was having on her son, Hamad.

“How can you explain to a seven-year-old the reasons for rejecting him from a school where wants to learn and where he made friends?” she wondered. “How do you explain to him how he contracted the disease and how it is affecting his life as well as our own lives?”

The mother said that her son fell sick when he was two and they took him to the hospital in Al Qunfudah.

“Following thee routine check-ups, the doctors said they would have to perform a surgery on him and that they needed extra blood,” she said. “However, two days later, we were shocked when the doctors informed my husband that Hamad had Aids. The doctors said that he had contracted it from us, his parents. We underwent the necessary test and the result was that we did not have the virus as they claimed. We insisted on knowing the truth and on how our son got it, so we decided to confront the hospital.”

The parents filed complaints of negligence against the hospital to the health ministry and to the Board of Grievances, an independent administrative judicial committee.

“However, there has been no response for the last five years during which the hospital tried to persuade us that our son may have contracted the disease during his circumcision which was carried out at a private clinic. We refuted the claim and told them that his elder brother was circumcised at the same time and he is in good health.”

The mother said that the family was left to deal on its own with huge issues.

 “My son keeps asking me every day about why his best friend Iyad was avoiding him and not coming to see him. The school was not at the very least discreet in dealing with Hamad and the news about his condition spread out and he was instantly turned into an outcast. He now spends his time confined to the walls of the house, besieged by formidable questions and suffering from disappointments. He just takes his medicine, in the mornings and evenings, not at all sure about his immediate future.”