Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/841282
By Karrie Osborn What e Heart Touch Project is Teaching us about Cambodia's Youngest HIV Patients Today, their futures look bright. They run and play and learn and smile. Yesterday was a different story. After her mother died from AIDS complications, young Phana's* future still seemed hopeful when her aunt took the grieving child into her home. But hope turned to despair when the aunt kept 9-year- old Phana locked in an upstairs room, fearful she might lose business as a hairdresser if people knew the child was HIV positive. This is the stigma of HIV and AIDS that hangs over so many children in Cambodia. Phana was eventually rescued by the New Hope Cambodian Children orphanage, and today she and the other 350-plus, mostly HIV-positive children who call New Hope home are given a chance to see the world in a new light—one of hope, of a future, and of a place to belong. Here, they are cared for, protected, given necessary medical care, and taught that having HIV does not make them "less than," as their society tries to label them. Part of that education comes when receiving therapeutic touch from volunteers at The Heart Touch Project and knowing, seeing, experiencing—some for the first time—that they are not untouchable. T H E I S S UE A T H A N D H I V / A I D S * The name has been changed to protect the child's privacy.