On World AIDS Day 2011, I thought there was no better way to talk about TB and HIV than to share a survivor’s story. We live in a time of unprecedented hope for people living with HIV. Antiretroviral treatment (ARV) offers the promise of a full life – people can now live with HIV for many, many years. Yet there is a ‘ thief in our midst’, as the Stop TB Partnership puts it. TB is robbing people living with HIV, and the countries they live in, of their futures.
TB is the leading cause of death in people living with HIV. Every minute, three people living with HIV have their lives snatched away by TB. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Target TB helped Mwasana, living with HIV, in Zambia.
Mwasana is 30 and lives in a dry, dusty compound in the Zambian capital of Lusaka. Mwasana isn’t married, so she lives with her father and stepmother, and looks after her five young brothers and sisters. Mwasana became extremely ill and weak in 2009 but didn’t know what was wrong. Luckily, she lived very close by to Precious, one of Target TB’s community volunteers. Precious took Mwasana straight to our project for diagnosis and help. Mwasana diligently took her antibiotic TB treatment, and with Precious supporting her, she started to gain strength.
However, her bad chest just wouldn’t improve and eventually she was tested and found to be HIV positive. Co-infection with HIV can often make TB extremely difficult to diagnose and to treat.
So, Mwasana had to change her treatment and she needed the support of Precious more than ever before. When Mwasana was diagnosed with TB, she felt stigmatised and she experienced discrimination from some people in her community. Mwasana became so ill, and had so much difficulty moving about, that she was often carried in a wheelbarrow. She was laughed at and made to feel very unhappy.
Even her family reacted badly to her illness. They were worried that she was so sick and unable to work, and therefore unable to earn money for food. Happily, Mwasana’s health has been improving steadily since then. When we met her in early 2010, she was on the road to full recovery from TB, feeling much stronger and better able to look after her siblings. Mwasana says it is the support she received from Target TB and its partner Zatulet that has helped her to cope. She told us ‘I look forward to Precious visiting every week’.
TB doesn’t have to be a death sentence to people living with HIV. Target TB aligns itself with the aims of ‘Time To Act – Save a million lives by 2015′ by the Stop TB Partnership.
As Nelson Mandela said in 2004 ‘We cannot win the battle against AIDS if we do not also fight TB’.
Posted on November 30, 2011
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