God in his own wisdom created human beings with different faculties making some cleverer than others. Among humanity there are some who care more about their health and others who just live each day as it comes without any worries whatsoever. When HIV/AIDS came it hit cities, towns and growth points first cascading to rural folk last.
Rural people especially men got it from former beauties who had been sent back home to rural areas for home based care after infection. Rural men who had adored these now sick ladies only saw the former beauty instead of the now ailing skeletal lady and got infected and infected their spouses and girlfriends setting the whole country side aflame with sick people. It took time for rural folk to really understand HIV/AIDs and when they did it was already too late. Thereafter the death rate continued to plummete.
When later awareness campaigns began reaching them there was mayhem throughout the countryside with death after death following and no family was left out of the masacre that ensued.
Rural folk are advantaged in that they have a certain type of understanding that towns folk do not have. Rural people are satisfied with very little or with what is available. Most do crave for more than what they get .When they’re ill they don’t panic or rush to hospital. They try the various traditional concoctions until they are healed or die. Only when they are really seriously ill do they go to hospital. Imagine how rural people survived when there were no ARVs. I for one am one of those rural people who tested positive when ART was none existent but managed to survive on herbs and cotrimoxazole from early 2000 to 2010 when I was initiated on ART for the first time. Incidentally I have spent most of my time in rural Gokwe where most people living with HIV can barely read or write their names but still manage to take their ARVs on time.
Rural people living with HIV despite lots of disadvantages adhere to medical instructions strictly. Among some of the challenges faced by rural people living with HIV are lack of latest information, disruptions in funding by USAID among others. Other challenges are superstition and the belief in witchcraft, there is also the issue of harmful religious and traditional practices as most rural folk follow the new Apostolic churches run by young prophets and bishops whose main job is spiritual healing where among other treatments sex is used as a cleansing act for bad luck and barrenness for young ladies leading to more infections.
Early marriages, wife inheritance and extra marital affairs mostly by men with married women and prostitutes are other challenges faced by rural folk. HIV awareness campaigns are now getting fewer and fewer and these need to be increased. To most rural folk the most important thing after testing positive and being initiated on ART is to have a continuous supply of ARVs.
Ministry of health and other stakeholders in the HIV value chain need to visit these rural folk more frequently to educate them on new trends. Rural clinics try their best but more needs to be done as these clinics are too far from most people with some being more than 20 km from the furthest village an example being from Ndandulo to Mkoka Clinic.
Support groups used to be the information highway of most HIV positive people and there is need for their revival if we are going to win the war against HIV/AIDs by 2030.
Piason Maringwa
+263774322043
