The five schoolchildren of Pampady village in Kottayam who picked up HIV at birth from their parents don’t know if they will ever see the inside of their school again as a committee deliberates what to do with them.The parents of the other children, who have been keeping their wards away from the school, today got local politicians and the school management to ensure that the HIV+ children stay away for a week. Consequently, the school saw full strength today.The five, including a boy in kindergarten, two girls in Class II and two more girls in Class IV, belong to northern Kerala districts. Separated from their HIV-infected parents and brought to the other end of Kerala by a church-based NGO, Ashakiran, the children were a year go admitted to the local lower primary school at Pampady. The MDLP School is a church school run on government aid, with its address showing it as belonging to an orphanage of the NGO.But six months ago, protests started, with parents of other students, who feared their own kids might get infected, asking Ashakiran to withdraw them. “We are not against letting those poor kids have an education. But why should we, the poor, alone take the risk? Why can’t the Ashakiran head, who manages a high-end public school for the wealthy barely a kilometre away, dare to enroll even one of them there?” asks Rajan, one of the protesting parents.According to him, the parents had even told the NGO that they would let the other kids study in the village school with their own if one of them is admitted to the public school. Sources with the church body, however, claim that the kids are just not capable of coping with the CBSE syllabus being followed in the public school. Other issues are surfacing too. “Why couldn’t the NGO let the kid stay with their parents in their own villages and go to school there?” asked another parent. Ashakiran functionaries were not available for comment.
