3 August 2000
A Kenyan court ruling ordering a man to take back his HIV positive wife has been hailed as a landmark judgement.
The Kenya news agency news agency quoted Joe Muruiki, the first Kenyan to go public about his HIV status 12 ago, as saying that the judgement was a good precedent and defines the government's position on AIDS.
"What we would be keen on seeing now are more such landmark judgements, especially involving the discrimination at work places where many HIV-positive workers are sacked," he said.
Muruiki spoke at the recent inaugural conference for people living with AIDS in Kenya at the Kenya College of Communications Technology.
He said he was frustrated a lot by his former employer - the Nairobi city council - when he went public about his HIV status in 1988.
He added that his wife - who was a Nairobi city council primary school teacher - was transferred to several schools "allegedly because her colleagues and pupils were scared and ashamed of her."
Asunta Wagura, who tested HIV-positive in 1988 said: "Most of us have gone through a lot of physical and psychological trauma from how our spouses, families, communities and employers react."
She was immediately expelled from the Nairobi Hospital nursing school, where she was a student, when authorities there discovered her condition.
Wagura added that on learning about her condition, her family followed suit and chased her away from home.
The 35-year-old woman, who has a 10-year-old son, is now the director of the Kenya Network of Women with AIDS.
She said her husband, who was a medical doctor, died of AIDS in 1996.
They both tested positive at the same time, "but my husband reacted with fury. He disappeared from the house for one week and returned very drunk, and in no mood for dialogue," Wagura recalled.
Amidst accusations and counter-accusations of who was to blame, they "could not agree on how to protect and live with each other and parted ways," she said.
"AIDS sufferers need a lot of support from friends and family but often unlike women, most sick men do not want to take care of their spouses. It's a conspiracy against women," Wagura added.
In the landmark ruling, the three Court of Appeal judges ordered a husband, who drove his wife out of their home after she tested HIV-positive, to take her back.
The said it would be morally wrong for him to desert his wife until a court decreed otherwise.
The identity of the man was not revealed.
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