By Piason Maringwa
During the recent NAC organised workshop for editors and station managers held at Chinhoyi’s CUT Hotel on 20-21 June 2024 the initial feeling was that HIV/AIDS was no longer news as it was now considered a tired story no longer worth giving prominence.
The above was the general feeling during the opening hours of the workshop but as the workshop progressed many present including the acting Min of Health Hon Prof Paul Mavhima agreed that HIV/AIDs was now a bigger threat than before and hence needed more news time and action than before .
Many reasons were cited that made HIV/AIDS a greater threat hence the need for more conceited efforts to fight HIV/AIDS in order to win the war by 2030.
I was invited to this workshop with my wife as guest speakers to give our own views and testimonies as people who have lived with HIV for over thirty years now.
I have always insisted that I am not an expert on HIV/AIDS issues and all my articles are based on my own personal experiences as a person who has lived with HIV knowingly for many years. I am an expert on living with HIV that’s all I can say about myself.
In the following paragraphs I shall try to explain a few things about how complacency, arrogance and indifference are affecting the interventions being implemented in the fight against HIV in Zimbabwe.
Complacency usually comes following a period of successes in any activity and in this case when people who have been on medication assume that they’re now healed and hence no longer need to continue on ART or any other medication they’ve been taking.
Many people discontinue taking vital medications each time they notice signs of healing and this later on make them drug resistant in later medications.
HIV medication currently requires that one takes their tablets consistently for life and to some this is a daunting task and a lot default along the way resulting in many complications along the way.
Adherence therefore is very important and needs to be encouraged and the best people to do that are non other than the media people such as editors and station managers.
Pride is caused by denial by people who believe that they are special and as such should not test HIV+. These find it very difficult to accept their HIV+ status and try very hard and unsuccessfully to change their positive status to negative.
They believe that HIV is such a horrible condition only fit for the poor and other such lowly people on the lower rungs of society. I think if HIV was transferable a lot of poor people would be carrying the heavy HIV burden by now all the affluent would sell their HIV to the gullible poor.
Arrogance is a state of mind whereby somebody thinks they’re too special or too good to be brought down by such conditions such as HIV and hence refuse to follow doctors’ prescriptions.
Some even refuse to accept that they are HIV+. They break up all the do’s and don’ts of living with HIV willy nilly hence cause many headaches for both themselves and their families when they become ill. The arrogant HIV people would even go for retesting at surgeries manned by their friends in the hope that their friends would change their positive status to negative just to please them.
Indifference is that state of mind where one no longer cares a hoot what happens to them or to other people. This usually affects those people who have reached a point where they see no future in this life.
These are the young and older generations who now depend on drugs and are almost always in a state of intoxication and are very suicidal and are capable of committing any crime without fear of the consequences. When such people test HIV+ they go all out to infect as many people as they can .They are a very dangerous lot these indifferent individuals and there are a lot of them all over the place.
We are now living in times where all young people who were born HIV+ are now getting married and mostly without getting tested.
Very little effort is being made to encourage these young couples to get tested before getting married. The love bug is too powerful to allow these young lovers to be careful.
The idea behind getting tested first is not to stop people from getting married but it’s just to make couples make informed decisions.
When our now 31 year old and mother of 3 HIV+ boys was 16 and was now getting into relationships we sat down with her and had a long chat with her about the importance of disclosing her positive status to those she got into relationships with so as to avoid embarrassment and humiliation later on in her life.
Later when she got married we were very happy to hear that our son in law like her was also HIV+.
Our support groups since 2004 have been advocating for same status marriages and we have recorded many successes in this area as many young people as well as widows and widowers have found partners through this initiative.
A lot of work still needs to be done in the area of HIV/AIDS advocacy as the war is far from being won.
There is also need to remove the shame and embarrassment of taking HIV medication in public.
People need to feel free to talk and take their ART wherever and whenever they feel like instead of the hide and seek scenario we see at present.
