Thread: Thailand AIDS Temple Offers Life Lessons as Patients Face Death

Lopburi. Ice Wepawadi has not told her parents she has AIDS, even though she is only days from death at this Buddhist temple hidden away on a Thailand hillside. The emaciated 25-year-old lies in the bed she has occupied for the past month at the Wat Phra Baht Nam Phu temple, a hospice founded 17 years ago by a monk and caring for those living with a disease that is still considered taboo in Thailand.

“My family, my dad, my mum — nobody knows I came here. I just told them that I went to work. I don’t want to tell them. I feel they cannot take it,” Ice said. “This place is the last place. Everybody knows it’s their last but they are strong, they make their own happiness. All the time we laugh, we cannot think too much,” she said.

The temple, 80 kilometers from Bangkok, has cared for more than 10,000 people — still a small proportion of the estimated 610,000 people living with HIV in Thailand, according to UN figures.

While providing medical care for patients, the temple’s principles are steeped in its Buddhist faith. “The people living with HIV are a small group who do something wrong in their life and don’t have a chance to get better. This is about karma,” said temple coordinator Sayamon Unboonruang.

A wing of the hospice housing 33 patients in the final stages of their disease includes Ice, who spends her days listening to her favorite singer, Mariah Carey, surrounded by stuffed toys and pictures of monks. It is a long way from her life in Pakistan, where she worked for six years before learning she had contracted the virus.

Many patients arrive here unannounced and, often, anonymously, like Jo-Jo, who shares a ward with Ice. He was nicknamed by staff after arriving without identification, unable to speak and showing signs of mental illness. He had been living with his grandmother and after she died neighbors brought him to the temple.

Now he wants to die and refuses all medication and food. A bright blue earring, wooden necklace and painted red nails are the only hints of his former life. Near the room he and Ice share is a quarantine ward for patients with tuberculosis, a secondary illness for HIV sufferers.

Yet fear of the disease appears to exist even here — the temple’s clinic has no Thai doctor, and just one Indian nurse and a Cambodian doctor care for 120 resident and 300 non-resident patients. The doctor is not permitted to prescribe medicines.

In emergencies patients are sent to a hospital in nearby Lopburi town to receive antiretroviral drugs that slow the progress of the disease.

“I think they’re afraid of HIV, they don’t want to work with HIV-positive patients,” said the Indian nurse, Ching Thangsing, 26. “We tried at Lopburi hospital and we talked to the health department and then we do advertisements on Web sites. No one applied.”

Combating this fear is a key aim of the temple which welcomes school groups to its museums and monuments. Visitors pray at a Buddhist shrine on top of a hill that contains the ashes of 10,000 former residents. One museum displays the mummified bodies of some late residents, including a five-year-old boy, who contracted HIV from his mother, and a transvestite sex worker with silicone breasts.

Elsewhere, body parts are displayed in tanks of formaldehyde, a reminder that the human body can be put to good use. The idea behind the gruesome displays is to encourage visitors to avoid activities that could expose them to HIV/AIDS. “We cannot deny death,” Sayamon said.

“This is a very unique place,” said 36-year-old Katsumi Suzuki, a Japanese volunteer, as he talks to patients in a room looking out on a field of sunflowers and corn.

“It crosses the area between Buddhism and medicine. It’s not a hospital and I feel it’s not the best place for medical care, but maybe it’s the best place to live peacefully.”

Jakarta Globe

There's almost no excuse for anyone dying of AIDS today. Anti-retroviral treatments have made it a long term, chronic, yet manageable disease.

Unless of course you're unfortunate enough to live in a kleptocratic idiocracy with animist religious rituals and p-ss poor healthcare provision and a third world education system. Then you're in trouble.

Thankfully LOS isn't at all like that of course and everything here is wonderful and happy and isn't everyone doing a great job really and you have to admire those monks you know if only they were like that back home we could learn so much from them my friend had a son who went to be a monk it was great everyone was so happy and they even threw some coins at the relatives for good luck it was so much fun to see the children scramble to collect them my mate Dave goes there all the time he's even met someone we hear but who knows isn't it amazing how two cultures can interact like that he's even met the family and they're so kind and if we just stopped being so selfish and western and helped tem more we could learn so much I mean they are so happy always smiling anyway.

i have helped people in thailand with hiv. My impression is that hospitals(upper class) is not afraid of hiv/aids but you have to pay a little bit extra.
Yeah i am sorry to hear about people who suffer because of stupidity of others, when they can be given medicine and have a fairly "normal" life.
I aint afraid of no fucking bug

Monks at a Rural Thai Temple Restore Dignity and Serenity to People With AIDS
Dessy Sagita
February 09, 2011

Some of the HIV/AIDS patients living at Thailand's Wat Phra Baht Nam Phu putting on a show at the temple.
(JG Photo/Dessy Sagita)

Bangkok. For over 20 years, a temple in the hills of Lopburi province has been proving that, with the right support, people living with HIV/AIDS can continue to lead happy, peaceful lives free from the heavy stigma their disease often carries in Thailand.

Wat Phra Baht Nam Phu, located 150 kilometers northeast of Bangkok, is dedicated to giving treatment, hospice care and support to those living with full-blown AIDS.

Many of the patients here have come out of desperation after being rejected and abandoned by their own families and communities.

The temple’s founder, Dr. Alongkot Dikkapanya, who is also a Buddhist monk, said the temple was established in 1990 and initially only had two patients who came with severe health problems.

“Twenty years ago, when I first came here, people could not accept those who had been infected with HIV/AIDS, so they had nowhere to go,” said Alongkot, who gave up a promising career as an engineer in Thailand’s Ministry of Agriculture to become a monk at the age of 26.

Now the temple is home to 550 patients, including 140 children. Some of the children are HIV-positive, while the rest are here after losing their parents to the disease.

Alongkot said it was difficult at first to convince the people living near the temple to end their stigmatization of the patients and to help them live more productive lives.

He said that, for someone living with full-blown AIDS, staying with family is not always the best option because the patient is often ostracized. In many cases, they are forced to live in an isolated room and asked to eat by themselves, with no one willing to talk to them.

Thanyaporn Kunsombat Duboultz, an official from the Lopburi Health Office who used to volunteer at the temple for more than six years, said many of the patients go there to die.

“The stigma and the rejection from their family and society can erase their will to stay alive,” she said.

But living at the temple, among so many others who are going through the same kind of ordeal, often helps lift their spirits, she said. They also have the chance to talk with the monks and volunteers.

“They see now that some people who were dying are getting better and they see that the monks don’t appreciate them any less because of their disease,” Thanyaporn said.

The temple has its own school — with classes from pre-school all the way to high school — for the children living here.

“When they are ready, they can choose to work for the temple or outside,” Thanyaporn said, adding that many of the students go on to study in nursing schools

Alongkot said many of the patients support themselves by making handicrafts. Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej has also provided them with some financial support, but most of the temple’s funding comes via donations from visitors and those living in the area.

“What’s even more important than financial support is that these people know that they are loved and accepted. They just need to feel they are not alone,” Alongkot said.

Thanyaporn said the large donations indicate that people are beginning to understand the importance of ending the stigma and helping the patients.

Since 1992, the temple has cremated more than 10,000 people who succumbed to AIDS-related illnesses. Most died in peace, having gotten to live out their final days in relative comfort.

Rico Gustav, the treatment and advocacy officer for the Bangkok-based Asia Pacific Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS (APN+) said that if Indonesian religious leaders were to take a similar stand, then thousands of HIV/AIDS patients there could be saved.

Rico, who is himself HIV-positive, said religious leaders wield enough influence to get their followers to end the stigma.

“We have some big religious organizations in our country, especially Islamic ones, that can say, ‘We might not agree with what these people have done, but if we don’t do anything, they will die,’ ” he said.

thejakartaglobe.com

just another business venture run by the monks.
know one lady who lives with it and she manages ok
with the available medicine and has done for over 14
years. she still looks healthy.
there is no need to die.
from what i understand anyway.

Originally Posted by billy the kid

just another business venture run by the monks.

just occasionally billy , it made be to your advantage to read more than the headline .

https://teakdoor.com/world-news/30681...e-of-doom.html

Originally Posted by Mid

Originally Posted by billy the kid

just another business venture run by the monks.

just occasionally billy , it made be to your advantage to read more than the headline .

yea , a bit harsh there mid. but these medicines have been around for quite a long time now and many are able to live a pretty much normal life tho they may have problems finding a job and having a family life also.
so hence the temple ok.

Originally Posted by jizzybloke

https://teakdoor.com/world-news/30681...e-of-doom.html

having read that jizzy i just wanna puke-up.
it just killed any little repect i had stone dead.
these are crimes and surely the goverment, oops !!
must remember what country we're talkin about.

now i'm angry
call me mr. angry.

Originally Posted by CliffD

There's almost no excuse for anyone dying of AIDS today. Anti-retroviral treatments have made it a long term, chronic, yet manageable disease.

Unless of course you're unfortunate enough to live in a kleptocratic idiocracy with animist religious rituals and p-ss poor healthcare provision and a third world education system. Then you're in trouble.

Thankfully LOS isn't at all like that of course and everything here is wonderful and happy and isn't everyone doing a great job really and you have to admire those monks you know if only they were like that back home we could learn so much from them my friend had a son who went to be a monk it was great everyone was so happy and they even threw some coins at the relatives for good luck it was so much fun to see the children scramble to collect them my mate Dave goes there all the time he's even met someone we hear but who knows isn't it amazing how two cultures can interact like that he's even met the family and they're so kind and if we just stopped being so selfish and western and helped tem more we could learn so much I mean they are so happy always smiling anyway.

faf.