Sundaymail Editor
Tendayi Westerhof
I AM among the more than one million people living with HIV who have been saved by the Global Fund in Zimbabwe.
I am also among the 30 million people living with the virus around the world who have been saved by the Fund.
Dealing with stigma
I had a life-changing experience in 2002 when I tested positive for HIV after I had just wedded.
Circumstances within my marriage at the time forced me to get tested for HIV, though I had little knowledge about the virus then.
I was gripped by fear of the unknown. To make matters worse, my marriage ended overnight and my whole world crumbled around me.
For over a year, I kept my HIV status to myself because I was afraid of telling the next person. I was uninformed about living with HIV and that culminated in self-stigma. I could not shrug off the feeling that everyone knew that I had HIV whenever I walked around.
I took it upon myself to learn about HIV and AIDS through research and visiting AIDS service organisations.
This helped me a lot.
I learnt in no time that being HIV positive and having AIDS was different.
AIDS is a collection of illnesses caused by the HIV virus when the body’s immune system has completely broken down. HIV is a virus that causes AIDS. Being on Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) helps halt the further spread of HIV in your body and can help you live positively for many years without developing AIDS.
Back then, I was a young woman aged about 35 years and could not point out when I had contracted the virus.
To make matters worse during the early 2000s, HIV treatment was not readily available. I had to procure my own treatment from private health institutions, which was very costly.
There was little information on treatment. I had to learn how to live with my new condition by myself.
It was during that time that I found myself getting more involved in HIV and AIDS advocacy and activism.
I chose to stand up and fight stigma and discrimination that I faced as a person living with HIV.
Because of who I was in society: coming from a strong modelling background, being an entrepreneur and a popular figure, I decided to disclose my HIV status. I first made the disclosure to my close family members including children and a few trusted friends.
In 2003, I eventually disclosed that I was HIV positive publicly.
So bad was the stigma that some media houses did not even want to write the story about my disclosure.
However, with time they warmed up to the news and I have worked very closely with the media over the years.
They have been my biggest allies in helping to amplify advocacy issues for people living with HIV.
They turned me into some kind of celebrity. I had so much impact on the lives of many Zimbabweans.
I made it simpler to talk about HIV and AIDS. As a result, lives were saved.
Yes, this came with its fair share of consequences. I was labelled a gold-digger, a liar and an attention-seeker.
This was because I looked healthy.
Even up to this day there are still people who believe that I am not HIV positive and that my disclosure was motivated by personal aggrandisement. Because HIV and AIDS had caused so much devastation in many countries around the world, the United Nations, the African Union and other regional blocs had to take action in order to mitigate the epidemic.
This was the time when the Global Fund to Fight HIV, TB and Malaria was founded.
Zimbabwe soon became a beneficiary of the Global Fund and established its own in-country mechanisms to ensure that the financial support from the Global Fund was effectively utilised. This was a result of strong advocacy by both HIV activists, advocates and governments around the world. The Government of Zimbabwe had declared HIV and AIDS a national disaster and emergency, leading to the setting up of the National AIDS Trust Fund in 2002.
Fighting stigma through advocacy
I founded the Public Personalities Against AIDS Trust (PPAAT) and Models Against AIDS in order to fight stigma and discrimination in 2003.
Through the PPAAT we had the first-ever group of Parliamentarians from the Portfolio Committee on Health and Child Care undergoing HIV tests publicly before the media in an effort to de-stigmatise HIV testing and counselling. This resulted in a deluge of people seeking HIV testing at various testing centres.
The Models Against AIDS using the art of modelling and edutainment promoted change of attitude and creation of an enabling environment for people living with HIV. Receiving support from the Global Fund Much of the financial support from the Global Fund was channelled towards the procurement of HIV treatment. I benefitted from the Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission (PMTCT) programme after I fell pregnant. I was put on AZT (an anti-HIV drug) six weeks before I was due to deliver and my new-born baby was given a dose of Nevirapine a few hours after birth.
This was all made possible with support from the Global Fund.
I gave birth to an HIV-free child.
This was a big story on television and in the print media.
The then Minister of Health, Dr David Parirenyatwa, supported my decision to take up PMTCT, which is also offered free to all pregnant and lactating mothers in Zimbabwe.
I was eventually put on free ART through the Government’s programme. New policies were now put in place for free treatment of all HIV-positive people at all public health institutions.
Today Zimbabwe has more than one million people living with HIV who are on treatment. Credit also goes to the Government through the National AIDS Council, where I am a board member representing people living with HIV.
This averted needless deaths which were recorded from around 1986 to early 2000 when treatment was not readily available and stigma was still rife. People had no adequate information on the disease.
All we saw at the time were scary pictures of people with full-blown AIDS and who were dying in their numbers.
Educating the at-risk demography
As we move towards the last mile of ending AIDS, we need to ensure that no-one is left behind especially the at-risk population.
Our public health facilities must be capacitated so that service delivery continues to improve in order to ensure that everyone has access to comprehensive health services.
Access to good health is a human right. We need to keep young girls in school and provide them with comprehensive sex education.
More investment must go towards adolescent girls and young women, however, we must not leave behind our young men and boys behind.
They too play an important role in dealing with Gender-Based Violence that increases the vulnerability of women and girls to HIV infection and other socio-economic challenges.
We need to adopt new ways of doing business to ensure that people living with HIV who are in need of treatment continue to get their medical supplies timeously and without interruption.
Advocacy during the Covid-19 pandemic Women living with HIV were impacted negatively by Covid-19 since most work in the informal sector.
Because of lockdowns their household income was affected.
They were subjected to movement restrictions and a significant number missed out on EMTCT (elimination of mother-to-child transmission) opportunities. The Covid-19 pandemic threatens to disrupt and even reverse the gains that have been made in the fight against HIV and AIDS.
I am the national co-ordinator of the Pan African Positive Women’s Coalition – Zimbabwe, a network of women living with HIV.
We have done a lot of work on Covid-19 led by women living with HIV.
Zimbabwe has submitted the C19RM (a response mechanism supporting countries to mitigate the impact of Covid-19 on programmes to fight HIV) funding request to the Global Fund as women living with HI.
With support from the Global Fund’s Community, Rights and Gender (CRG) Technical Assistance, we held consultations to help set priorities for women living with HIV in the country funding proposal. Our report of the country consultation was adopted by the country writing team.
Global Fund made it possible for women living with HIV to be heard and to meaningfully get involved in in-country processes.
In conclusion
My viral load is now undetectable as a result of access to HIV treatment.
I now only have a challenge with emerging issues caused by aging and HIV such as non-communicable diseases which are affecting most people aging with HIV.
I have written two books on my life with HIV and Tsitsi Dangarembga has produced a documentary “Growing Stronger” where I am a protagonist. It has been featured several times on ZBC TV and the world over.
Note about The Global Fund:
The Global Fund’s Disruption Report showed that testing for HIV fell by 41 percent between April and September 2020, compared to the same time in 2019 across Africa and Asia. During the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in Zimbabwe, Covid Response Mechanism (c19RM) investments of $45million from The Global Fund were used to provide PPE for healthcare workers, conduct over 13 000 Covid-19 tests, mitigate Covid-19 impact on HIV, procure lab equipment, renovate hospitals and other urgent improvements in health and community systems.
The Global Fund has awarded nearly US$ 1 billion to 106 countries to support their responses to Covid-19 as of 2021.
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