This is the first of three parts.

At the recently concluded International AIDS Conference (ICAAP9) in Bali, Indonesia, the 2nd largest AIDS Conference in the world, these three Filipinos came out to share their stories of living with HIV.

Together, the three gave not only a face to the epidemic, but a voice to the everyday realities of living with it.

Edna, housewife and mother Edna, is a 38-year-old housewife.

When she met her husband, Romy, he was a seafarer whose journeys to other lands fascinated her. They married after a few years of dating and Romy continued his job as a seafarer, deployed to various parts of the world for long periods at a time.

Edna says that, at first, it was difficult to have Romy away so much, but after they started having children, it became easier to bear. She busied herself with taking care of the children and being both mother and father to them while Romy was at sea.

While they weren’t rich, Edna says that they lived a pretty decent life on Romy’s salary.

But in 2004, this all changed.

In that year, Romy met an accident while he was onboard the ship. When he was trying to fix a hydraulic jack, one of the pipes came loose and hit him. Romy was left with a huge wound in his upper abdomen. He was declared unfit to work and sent home when his ship docked in Amsterdam.

Back in the Philippines, Romy was operated on and his blood was tested.

A few weeks later, an epidemiologist told him his blood tested positive for HIV.

The implication of such news was a lot for Edna to bear. Romy thinks that he may have gotten infected during an encounter in Brazil where he had unprotected sex.

But the infidelity soon became the easier burden to bear.

Romy could no longer return to work so Edna had to assume the role of sole breadwinner of the family. In 2007, Edna also tested positive for HIV.

At first, I didn’t want to be tested. Romy is the only man I’ve ever had contact with so I figured that if he was positive, I was positive, too.

According to a UNAIDS study entitled, HIV Transmission in Intimate Partner Relationships in Asia, there are an estimated 1.7 million women in Asia who are living with HIV. The study estimates that 90 percent of these women were infected by their longtime boyfriends or husbands.

However, being a seafarer may have also increased Romy’s vulnerability to the virus.

A recent study showed that seafarers are three times more susceptible to the HIV, as compared to the general population.

Being far away from home compounded by the loneliness of being at sea makes seafarers seek offshore recreation through unprotected sexual encounters. Some may maintain a casual relationship with a commercial sex worker in different ports who may in turn be having simultaneous relationships with other male clients. The incidence of multiple concurrent partnerships adds to the seafarers vulnerability to HIV.

Edna’s testimony at a forum held by the International Organization on Migration (IOM) was the preface for the launching of a new IOM program whose specific objective is to reduce HIV incidence in the maritime sector.

The program called, Global Partnership on HIV and Mobile Workers in the Maritime Sector is the first global multisectoral partnership that involves employers of seafarers, trade union organizations and international labor groups.

The Philippines, which deploys around 350,000 seafarers and supplies 20 percent of all seafarers globally, has been chosen to be the pilot country for this program.

Other members of this global partnership include: International Committee on Seafarers Welfare, International Labour Organization, International Maritime Health Association, International Shipping Federation and Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

Jerico, former OFW

Jerico was just about to live out his dream of working in a foreign country and celebrate his 30th birthday when he found out that he was HIV positive.

It was 2005 and Jerico had just moved to Dubai. He had gotten a job working in a food establishment and a HIV test was a prerequisite for an employment visa.

Even though I had a number of casual unprotected encounters with other men, I wasn’t nervous about taking the test. I didn’t think HIV was something that would happen to me. When they told me that I was positive, I thought it was the end of the world, recalls Jerico.

Being in a foreign country made matters worse for Jerico. Not only was he away from family and friends, he also had to contend with the HIV policy on migrant workers in a foreign country.

I was put in a quarantine area isolated from the rest of the hospital and then I was deported, he says.

While his dream of working abroad may have come to an end, Jerico found another way to make a difference. As an Area Coordinator of Pinoy Plus, a support group of people living with HIV/AIDS, he conducts pre-departure orientation seminars to OFWs.

Jerico is also a staunch advocate of policies that will protect the rights of migrant workers who are HIV positive. Drawing from his own experience, he has been invited to international conferences to give his personal testimony. Before ICAAP9, Jerico was in Switzerland speaking at a World Health Organization (WHO) forum about his experience.

Sharing my story has helped a lot in my healing. I used to think that I was dying and that there was no hope. I hope that I can be seen as proof that there is life after a positive diagnosis.

At ICAAP9, the Coordination of Action Research on AIDS and Mobility (CARAM Asia), a regional Malaysia-based NGO that investigates migration and health issues, called for the removal of mandatory HIV testing for migrant workers as a condition for entry, stay, or employment in their destination country.

According to CARAM’s Asian Report on Mandatory Testing, standard practices such as securing explicit consent, provision of pre-test and post-test counseling, protection of confidentiality are often ignored due to various factors related to large-scale testing of migrants. Furthermore, CARAM called for a stop to the deportation of migrant workers who are HIV+ or have other treatable health conditions.