HIV and Motherhood in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam: Caregiving of HIV Positive Children as a Moral Mode of Disease Engagement

Since the early 1990s, when the HIV virus first appeared in Vietnam, the epidemic has increased rapidly throughout the country and has indelibly influenced all levels of Vietnamese society – from the lives of individuals infected with HIV and their families to the policy and programmatic efforts of a diverse array of government bodies and local community organizations. In the Asia-Pacific region, Vietnam ranks fifth among countries with the highest number of people living with HIV: More than 260,000 people are living with HIV and an estimated 100 people become infected every day (Tuoi Tre News 2014). Ho Chi Minh City, according to a report by the Vietnam Administration of HIV/AIDS Control in 2013, is among the cities in Vietnam with the highest rates of HIV infections. Among the various groups of HIV patients in Vietnam, this paper zooms in on that of single HIV-positive mothers with HIV-positive children. As negative connotations are still deeply linked with HIV/AIDS, mothers perceive their own HIV positive status not only as burden to themselves, but also to their children. How, then, does such awareness contribute to their illness narratives and shape the mothers’ relationship with their children as well as other community members? Furthermore, what larger implications does this have on the effect of HIV/AIDS on notions of motherhood in the Vietnamese society?

This paper consists of three chapters. The first chapter traces the historic and social progression of HIV/AIDS scene in Vietnam. Here I examine how various social and cultural forces have rendered HIV/AIDS in Vietnam to be more of a moral than a biomedical discourse. The second chapter describes how the increasing availability and access of biomedical treatments have redefined the temporality of HIV, causing a shift in its portrayal from being an acute and rapidly deteriorating to a chronic lifelong condition. I further discuss the ways in which HIV positive mothers as well other people living HIV employ such chronicity discourse as part of a larger effort of disease normalization. The last chapter examines notions of motherhood and caregiving as they intersect with discourses of HIV. I focus on how HIV positive mothers see and live out her identity as a caregiver of HIV positive children.