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Living with HIV is tense enough in communities where morality is still attached to acquiring the virus.
But acquiring the virus at birth and living with it right through adulthood is more nerve-racking as one has to go through various decisional dilemmas ranging from status disclosure to entering into relationships.
Twenty-two-year-old Musa Nyoni from Bulawayo (not his real name) poured his heart out to journalists during a media tour organised by the National Aids Council recently in that province.
Nyoni, who was born with HIV and stays in one of Bulawayo’s leafy suburbs with his parents, was at pains initially to accept an interview with journalists.
He feared his relatives would recognise his voice and deduce his parent’s status without their consent.
“Even though I am over 18 and I can make my own decision either to disclose my status or not I still have to consult my parents if they are cool with my decision.
“Reason being that once I disclose my status and I make it known to everyone that I was born with HIV, simple mathematics is that one plus one is equals to two.
“Disclosing my status will then mean disclosing my parents’ status even if they are not ready to face the world with their HIV status,” said Nyoni.
He said another decisional dilemma was entering into a relationship.
“Some of us have grown into adults and just like any other youths we out to be involved in love relationships but the dilemma is at what level you reveal your status to your partner,” he said.
Nyoni said proposing love to a woman on its own was a mammoth task and telling them your HIV status was even more complicated.
“You cannot move around telling every woman that you are interested in that you are HIV positive lest the whole world tags you with those descriptive HIV phrases but at the same time you don’t know at what stage should you reveal your status to her lest she taint you devil who wasted her time,” he said.
Another 18-year-old girl who found out her HIV-positive status while she was in high school said her biggest headache was accepting that she was born HIV-positive.
“I keep asking myself why me. Why did it have to be me, why not my elder brother or my younger sister,” said Luta Moyo.
Moyo who tested positive at high school after she got ill said, at first, she got so bitter with her mother.
“It so happened that I got seriously ill when I was in boarding school that they had to send me back home. My mother took me to a doctor who requested that an HIV test be carried out from which I tested positive,” she said.
“I had not had any sexual relationship with any man and I knew I had acquired it from my mother. I was so bitter with her. Firstly, I was bitter that she hid such important information for me all these years and secondly that she had exposed me to the virus.”
Moyo said through several counselling sessions and support from other youths living with HIV, she got to accept her status.
She said through the same sessions, she also got to understand her mother’s position that access to prevention of HIV to unborn babies was limited when she was born.
Today, Nyoni and Moyo are part of the Community Adolescence Treatment Supporters programme administered by AfricAid.
Bulawayo Africaid focal person Mr Siniko Ndlovu said the CATS programme was established in 2009 with a view to provide community based treatment adherence monitoring and counselling for HIV positive youths.
“CATS are youths who are living with HIV and were trained and mentored over a period of time and can now assist their peers to live positively,” said Mr Ndlovu.
He said Africaid is currently working with nine CATS who are working with close to 300 children living with HIV in Bulawayo.
“CATS provide daily support for their HIV-positive peers and this has proved to be an extremely powerful approach for supporting children and adolescents with their daily, lifelong medication.
“It is also an opportunity for the adolescents to develop counselling skills and experience,” said Mr Ndlovu.
He said working within their own communities, the children also create a safety net from which their peers can be supported on varying dilemmas they face in their day to day lives such as disclosure, treatment stigma and discrimination and relationship.
According to the Zimbabwe 2014 national HIV and Aids estimates, about 9,13 percent of children born to HIV positive mothers and still acquired the virus either at birth or during breastfeeding.
About 170 000 children below the age of 15 are living with HIV (Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 2014).
About 50 percent of these are on antiretroviral treatment and are likely to live up to adulthood.
National Aids Council communications officer Mrs Tadiwa Pfupa said NAC was working with such children in various ways including ensuring that they get adequate treatment.
She said in partnership with various partners such as Africaid, they were mobilising parents and guardians to have all minors in their custody tested for HIV.
She however, said reaching with services to all HIV positive children was a challenge as some of them do not even know their status.
“Issues of consent in terms of HIV testing remain a challenge. All children below the age of 16 cannot be tested for HIV without their parent or guardian’s consent. If a parent or guardian does not bring forward a child or children for testing, it will be difficult, if not impossible to avail HIV services to the minors,” said Mrs Pfupa.
Mrs Pfupa said a number of HIV-positive minors were orphans and guardians looking after them do not make efforts to have them tested till they fall very sick.
“NAC is sensitising parents and guardians to take their children for testing so that they can benefit from treatment programmes, if need be,” she said.
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