Papua New Guinea Police Eye AIDS Claim

PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea - Officials in Papua New Guinea are investigating claims by an HIV-positive woman that people with AIDS were buried alive by their relatives when they became too sick to care for, an official said Tuesday.

The acting director of Papua New Guinea's National AIDS Council, Romanus Pakure, said police and health workers were being sent to the Southern Highlands to investigate the claims.

Pakure conceded that the stigma against people with HIV was very strong in the countryside, where education about the disease is scarce. Similar claims of AIDS killings had been made in the past, he said, but none were verified.read more