For Iran's Isolated HIV Patients, Outreach and Treatment
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, December 2, 2006
By offering a cup of tea and a safe place to talk, two Iranian brothers were able to coax stigmatized drug addicts and people with HIV out of social isolation and into a bare, one-room clinic.
Arash and Kamiar Alaei, doctors from the western town of Khorramshahr, struck up friendships with people they met by going over names and addresses listed in prison surveys, Arash Alaei said. Iranian families often ostracize their sons and daughters with HIV, casting them out into the street or treating them as strangers in their homes.
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"When Kamiar shook hands with one man, he cried," Arash Alaei said in an interview Thursday, referring to a patient whose relatives had banished him to a room, refusing to eat with him or touch him.
Arash Alaei was one of 14 Iranian doctors who visited Washington this week to take part in discussions hosted by the Aspen Institute, a nonprofit international organization that supports dialogue on contemporary issues. The Iranians and their American counterparts, including Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, discussed their health systems, realities and challenges. The visit by the Iranians was the firs