Padan Muka

Picture these scenarios.

1. A married man visits a CSW and catches the HIV and subsequently passes it to his spouse and the spouse passes it to her newborn child.

2. An intravenous drug abuser shares needles with his fellow addicts and catches the HIV/HBV,HCV. He may be married and passes it to his spouse.

3. A gay man has many ONS with multiple partners and catches the same virus/es.

4. A lady catches the HIV from a blood transfusion many years ago.

What was your feeling when you read the above scenarios? If you are like the majority of the people I know, you would probably be sympathetic to patient no.4 and say 'padan muka' to the rest of them. 'Padan muka' is a malay term spoken to mean "You deserve it or Serve you right".

Sadly, that is the most prevalent attitude, even amongst my most well meaning friends and loved ones. It's even more distressing to find the same attitude in the community whose business is compassion and healing, ie. the medical fraternity. Attitude colours behaviour and if this kind of attitude prevails, how can one expect fair and good care in the hospital?

I have a young man hanging on to dear life by a thread in my ward. He has HIV/AIDS complicated by multiple opportunistic infections. I had a conversation with a nurse last night and she said "Padan muka dia, siapa suruh pergi cari penyakit"! (Serve him right, who asked him to get himself infected?).

A lot of people are interested in ID. But the interest focuses mainly on HOW a person got infected. It's like the papparazzi or something. As soon as they know, they form an opinion regarding the patient, usually a negative opinion.

I make it a point to tell the medical students who follow me on rounds that the How is a lot less important than "What are we going to do for this patient now?". My own personal opinion is that mine is not the job to judge; mine is the work to help and heal (if possible). The how part is between the patient and GOD.

Jesus said "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone".