FACE OF HIV

Last week I was in class with a bunch of nurses and medical practitioners. I am pursuing a diploma course on HIV&AIDS management.

This short course is for managers and it is meant to build their capacities to enable them design Home based care (HBC) programs for their hospitals and health facilities. It is a nine week on job training.

I complained of boredom the whole week. Every one in this class was older than I am, happily married with children and didn’t seem to understand why I am a single mum.
“You say you have a son?” one woman asked me during breaks. “Yeah, he turns nine sometime this week.” I proudly reply.
“So what have you been doing all this time?” she asks and I blankly look at her
“How come you are not married all this time?” She insists.
“Because I have been doing what people my age do; play around.” I reply and wait for the shock on her face.

I missed my office and I missed open minded company so much I was glad we got to the end of the week. During our lesson on human rights, we are told that every person(HIV+/-) has a right to marry and found a family. And it has to be in that order. I question whether this is the ideal anymore. Everyone looks at me like i landed from soddom. Seriously seeing as most of HIV infections take plave through "non ideal situation" i think its would be detrimental to bury our heads in the sand.

You see I was in class with people who still viewed HIV as something very far away from their door step. My first day in this class was so emotional I almost walked out, only one person in class knew of my HIV+ status so actually felt whatever it is I was going through listening to these guys answer questions and make comments.

There is always that rule in these classes that ensures we respect each others opinion; this made me shut my mouth. Last week however I must have protested so much I think stepped on a lot of toes.

As we covered the topic on Stigma and discrimination, our tutor maybe trying to emphasize her point on how people sometimes discriminate PLHIV without their knowledge asked us a question.
“Who amongst you would employ a HIV+ house help?” she asked.

One woman carries up her hand, and tells us she wouldn’t mind but she heard from someone that there was this woman who employed a self confessed HIV+ house help. Apparently this girl would cook the family meal and put her period in it. At this point I go like…What?
Before I could recover from that, someone else carries up their hand and wants to share her experience. She was looking for a house help and told everyone in her office. Her colleague introduces her to one of their clients who is HIV+. She interviews the girl and she is okay for the job.
She feels it’s necessary to inform her husband and so calls him.
“I called my husband and told him I already found a good girl, the only problem is that she is HIV+.” Her husband totally refuses to hire this girl.

That did it for me. I had my hand up and gave a very emotional reaction to those two women’s contribution. I actually felt myself trembling with rage.
Did these people know they were talking about people with feelings and emotions? Or once you are HIV+ its okay for people to hand down whatever judgment they saw fit about how safe you are as a person living in their houses.

I thought of Susan, the girl in my Support group whose brother stopped paying her college fees because according to him, she wasn’t going to live long enough to reap from her college education. Weren’t those situations similar to some extent?

These women work in Comprehensive Care Center (Centers in hospital that are specific for HIV&AIDS treatment and management).
I asked whether they knew the modes of transmission of HIV and if they knew, that cooked period was harmless. I mean if all of us were to find out what it is our house helps put in our food we’d collapse.
Seriously most of these young girls are overworked and treated so bad I wouldn’t be surprised if they spit on every meal they cook.

Someone interjects and gives her story,
“I heard of this one house girl whose employer looked through her phone and found nude photos of her on her bed.”
I was mortified. “How come it’s okay for people to take nude photos but a serious health and moral threat for a HIV+ person to do It.?” I ask.
Is it a bad thing to take nude photos? Or does it become bad when a HIV+ person does it. Does ones HIV+ status define them or their character?
First and foremost that was invasion of privacy, that woman had no right to go through this girl’s phone or judge her.
I also don’t advocate for people living with HIV to be given jobs out of pity but because they are competent for the jobs and deserve the chance to prove it.

After class one woman comes to me and compliments me for the passion I have for people living with HIV. She talks to me for about five minutes and I realize this woman has no idea that I am HIV+. She goes on and on about how much she would like to be passionate about issues of HIV&AIDS as much as she is –ve and wonders what would help. I was speechless.
Funny thing though, through out my arguments I kept using myself as a point of reference, I used a lot of “As a person living with HIV I think this or that,” or “We don’t need pity we need space.” And all this time no one ever thought that I was HIV+.

Towards the end of the week I figured out why. People still think they can pick out the “HIV look”. I don’t have the look so I am okay.
Its sad really that with all the awareness programs in place, people still expect HIV+ people to have a distinctive look, and live in some social class setting and not to be bright enough to articulate issues.
It’s mortifying when these people are health practitioners. This thought makes a lot of us be so complacent.

One thing is for sure, if we are to get this message across then we need to double up our efforts. People need to know these truths. That There is no ‘face of HIV’ and HIV doesn’t define anyone.

KENYA AIDS INDICATOR SURVEY (KAIS)

Some people live and learn, and some only live.

Wise people learn from their mistakes, wiser people learn from other people's mistakes.-


I don’t like statistics; not that I undermine the need for it. Its just that every time I hear this word in relation to HIV, I get too emotional.

So the KAIS report was released last week and its findings left Kenyans talking about nothing else but HIV for about a week now. I have done numerous interviews and answered a number of emails and phone calls from people who wanted my organizations opinion on the findings of the report.

I did my research, listened to few other people’s responses to check that they were in line with what I really felt was good enough to talk about and once I was sure we were speaking the same language echoed what every other HIV organization or activist said on the matter.

You know statistics tell you a lot of stuff like the number of people infected; the number of people infected but don’t know their status or the number of people accessing treatment and lots of other issues.

What statistics doesn’t tell you though, is the pain and suffering of a person living with the Virus and has AIDS, or the emotional turmoil of one who just discovered they have HIV or the pain and suffering of the family members who watch their loved ones waste away and die or even the pain the orphans go through once their parents are gone. Statistics don’t tell you this or the positive stories of those who spent up to a year sick in bed and regained their health. This is what we deal with everyday; very little justice is done to this aspect of HIV.

I heard about the KAIS report on the news and the first reaction I had was sadness. The shift in prevalence from 5.1 to 7.4 was for me too high. For a moment there I thought
“Oh God there are more people going to walk in our shoes.” You see I have lived with HIV enough to stop dwelling on the negative and I go about telling people how living positively really helps, but believe me I wouldn’t wish this virus even on my worst enemy.

What struck me about the report though was the number of people who tested HIV+ even after insisting they were not. These people make up the number of Kenyans walking on our streets that don’t know their status, aren’t seeking treatment and are potential partners to some non suspecting person.

Just as expected, some fingers started pointing at People Living with HIV (PLHIV). Most of the interactive radio shows had the survey as a topic of discussion and people had so much to say.
“These people are the ones who are infecting others” one person called into one radio station.
“Yeah they are given medicine so they don’t look thin anymore.” Another caller echoed
“They need to be tagged so we can identify them” yet another caller
“I feel these people need to be put in camps separate from all of us.” Yet another caller.
I believe in respect of ones opinions but I won’t lie that these didn’t disgust me.
Every week I get emails or talk to a lot of PLHIV. Most of them confess to me that they haven’t disclosed their HIV+ status to their spouses, families, friends or even colleagues at work. I wonder what these callers would have the same opinion if they found out that those going to the camps or getting the tags would be their wives, husbands, daughters, sons, sisters, brothers or friends.

I will not try to justify or talk for all the PLHIV. What I know though is that when you test HIV+ and seek treatment, you are counseled and advised on the need to have protected sexual contact. You are given tips on how not to infect your partner, what to do incase of possible exposure like seek treatment for PEP (Post Exposure Prophylaxis). But that’s not the only reason we decide to use the rubber as much as some of us hate the damn thing, it’s because it protects us too. We are educated on the risks of secondary or re-infections (getting infected with another strain of the virus). There are some of us who take these advices seriously.

We talked about these responses in the support group. Guess what? All of us want our relatives and friends to know our HIV+ status. But you see the stigma discrimination and the social injustices that are associated with PLHIV make us go into hiding or stay in the shadows.

If declaring my status means I lose my job, my social standing in the community, lose my family and friend and worst of all my dignity; then why would I want to tell? Before the society accepts that HIV is a viral condition that can be managed. Before they stop calling us ‘these people’ like we are from a different planet then no one will disclose their status. This is a potential risk for more infections by the way.

I wonder why someone thinks we need to be tagged so they can identify us. If I met you at say a party and you found me attractive enough to do ‘you know what’, why do you think its not your responsibility to take care of you health. I think we all need to stop pointing fingers and start taking responsibility for our own actions. This isn’t the era of naiveté. In this age and time; every adult is responsible for their own sexual health. If you aren’t responsible enough then please Abstain.

Most people are deciding not to know their status because they feel safe in the ignorance. “What I don’t know will not hurt me.” My friend once told me when I asked her to go for the test. “I’ll wait to get sick first.” She went on.
This attitude accounts for the 57% of Kenyans who have never tested for HIV and the 26% of those who insist they know they are HIV- but have HIV+ results when tested.

These findings should be a wake up call for the Government, Civil society organizations and all stakeholders to look into their programs and find out what we aren’t doing best or what new things or strategies can we formulate.
It’s not a time to forget the gains we have made so far but to learn from what we have been doing and to improve on the areas we haven’t done very well.

I heard someone on radio say
“For every one person we put on treatment, there are two more people getting infected.” Having even one person on treatment is a gain. But we need to ensure that as we put people on treatment, we don’t have any new infections.

We need to scale up our prevention programs. Make our Behaviors Change Communication (BCC) consistent, Scale up our VCT uptake by having more mobile VCT’s and reaching out to as many vulnerable groups as we can without prejudice.

This coupled with positive prevention (prevention of infection by those who already know their status) and Meaningful involvement of people living with HIV&AIDS (MIPA) just might reduce these rates.