And I thought Fuzi's case was complicated enough...

I wasn’t on clinic duty last Wednesday, but I still went to Ipoh GH nevertheless. I promised Ani I’d accompany her to the medical records unit to find out what happened to her request for her medical report; and after that I had to help get Rashid admitted to Ipoh GH. Rashid was already bedridden and his wife simply didn’t know what else to do.

Anyway, in the afternoon when HIV clinic was over, I dropped by the clinic to meet up with SN. She was not as busy as always so she invited me to sit down in the room (on the doctor’s chair some more!) so we could discuss on some of the patients. I needed to get updates on some of my PLWHA clients while SN wanted to know if I was in contact with some of her patients whom she could not contact. I must add that SN is a very dedicated nurse who remembers her HIV patients by name!

SN’s main concern was Makcik Minah, the grandma. Since we both only have Makcik Minah’s house phone number, neither one of us managed to contact her. I’ve tried calling her in the morning, I’ve tried calling her in the afternoon and I’ve even tried calling her at night. And every time nobody answered the call. Both SN and I assumed that Makcik Minah’s only son may have taken her with him to KL where he works. This is good, really, rather than have Makcik Minah staying all alone at her kampong house. But our worry is that from the last conversation SN had with Makcik Minah, the son still didn’t know about his mom’s HIV. Chances are even now he thinks his mom’s only suffering from illnesses elderly people usually have. Since Makcik Minah’s kampong is quite far from Ipoh, SN finally decided that she’d contact the people at the Pejabat Kesihatan Daerah to visit Makcik’s house to find out where she is. Even if she’s not home maybe her neighbors know how to contact the son.

I asked SN about Fuzi whose CD4 seemed to have dropped. I told her about Fuzi’s difficulty in getting her daughter’s MyKad done. According to SN at least Fuzi has a marriage cert even though it is not recognized in Malaysia. SN then related to me about Hasnah, a 27 year old woman, whose story was even more complicated…

Hasnah’s parents got married in Thailand. When Hasnah’s mom got pregnant, her father simply left, just like that, to God knows where. Hasnah’s mom then ran to Southern Thailand, and delivered Hasnah there - without any birth certificates. After delivery, she brought Hasnah back to Malaysia (don’t ask me how they managed to cross the border without any documentations whatsoever, okay?) and so Hasnah was brought up in Malaysia. I guess Hasnah didn’t go to any government schools; otherwise she would have had problems entering a government school without a birth cert.

Hasnah grew up and got married. Now, without the birth cert, Hasnah couldn’t have an IC either. So she grew up without any identification documents. How on earth did she manage to get married in Malaysia? She didn’t. Like mother like daughter, Hasnah too, got married in Thailand. Rather than trying to solve the problem of not having any identification documents, Hasnah opted to avoid the problem by getting married in Southern Thailand where the requirements are not as stringent. I’m not sure if it was any kind of syndicate, but the marriage sounded suspicious to me as there was no marriage certificate issued – so no question as to whether the marriage was recognized in Malaysia or not. Obviously it was not.

Hasnah’s husband then died of AIDS-related diseases and when Hasnah herself went for tests, she too was found to be HIV positive. Her in-laws took her 2 kids (I’m not too sure if they had birth certs!) and disowned Hasnah. Hasnah now lives with her aunt, the only person for the time being who can testify who Hasnah really is. Well, Hasnah and her aunt better do something now to get Hasnah the proper identification documents. If the aunt dies before that is done, chances are Hasnah’s status will remain as it is for life – no birth cert, no IC, no marriage cert, not a citizen of ANY country. In short, on paper, she doesn’t even exist! If she dies, what is there to report? Oh boy, if ever this case is passed to me, I wouldn’t even know how to start helping her!!

After SN told me about Hasnah, I thought to myself… wow! Fuzi is at least in a much better position. At least she has a marriage cert to show, although not recognized. And she has identification documents. If her children are not Malaysians, they are at least Indonesians. But Hasnah? No matter where she goes, she’s just like a fugitive…

Wah pening… pening…

And this morning, after my bath, I saw a missed call on my handphone. It was from SN. I wasn’t even ready for work yet and she has already called me. (I usually leave home around 9am… after my usual kampong exercise.) SN’s calls would only mean it has something to do with the PLWHAs, so I returned her call.

SN actually wanted me to look into a new case: Another young woman who was not referred to us earlier because her appointments never clashed with my NGO’s voluntary clinic duty. Disowned by her family, left by her husband, two children to care for and no income to support her living. Oh dear, what does she feed her children then?

Since this woman needs to come to the hospital every day for her methadone therapy, whenever needed, SN can easily tell the staff at the methadone clinic to tell her to come up to the HIV clinic before they give her the treatments she needed. Sort of twisting her arm – you don’t go upstairs first, we don’t give you your treatment for today. Otherwise she may just ponteng her HIV clinic appointments. So SN suggested that whenever I am free to come, just call SN by giving one day notice and SN will make sure this woman comes up to the HIV clinic to meet me on the appointed day.

Well, I’d better make arrangements to see her soon, hopefully by next week. I am very concerned about the 2 children. No matter what the parents have done, the children have the right to live a proper life!