HIV-positive student barred from first day of school

On what should have been his first day at school, 11-year-old Aleksandrs of Riga was not even permitted to enter the school building last week because he was HIV positive.

As the Latvian school year kicked off on Sept. 2 staff at Riga's public high school 44 would not let the boy through the front doors.

The school's director, Valentins Donajev, declined to comment on why the boy had been barred entry.

Donajev had been informed about the boy's health condition by Marite Lindermane, a member of Riga City Council's education, youth and sports affairs department.

But another member of the department, Guntis Helmanis, said Lindermane had no right to give out such information and that the child should never have been banned from school.

According to Dagmara Pandere, director of the education department's health protection branch, Latvian law stipulates that parents of children diagnosed with HIV or AIDS must inform their child's school that this is the case.

"The mother of this boy informed the principal of the school, Mr. Donajev, about her son's condition. He then told the deputy director Eleonor Naumova and then the situation got out of control," said Pandere.

"The school had no right to exclude this boy from participating in school activities. There is no rule that says that children with HIV or AIDS cannot go to school in Latvia," said Pandere.

Currently the education department is awaiting a written explanation from Donajev, while Naumova has left her post as a result of the case.

"As for now, the boy receives education at home, and it is unclear if he will go back to normal school after this incident," said Pandere.

Prosecutors are now investigating how information about the boy's health condition became known to the public, said Dzintra Subrovska, spokeswoman for the Prosecutor General's Office.

"We are trying to find out who from the medical community leaked this information, and we are also investigating why he was not allowed to go to school," said Subrovska.

A widespread fear of people who have been diagnosed with AIDS continues to exist in Latvia, mainly due to a lack of information about the illness. Health workers meanwhile warn that HIV is spreading fast throughout Central and Eastern Europe.

Surveys show that children in particular are being kept in the dark about the facts of the disease and rely chiefly on their peers for information, said Aiga Rurane, the World Health Organization's liaison officer in Latvia.

"They often acquire altered information and are not ready to accept other HIV infected youths," said Rurane. "They think that daily contact with this child may get them infected."