PlusNews HIV/AIDS news and analysis

A forum for people affected by HIV and AIDS whose voices are often not heard. These personal accounts document the impact of the pandemic, but also serve as testimony to people's strength and determination to meet those challenges. This forum seeks to encourage others to speak openly about the disease, tackling the stigma and denial that have led so many people to a silent and unnecessary death.

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Manya Andrews, "The condoms had the thickness and sensitivity of a tyre"
		Manya Andrews is a health communications consultant and former head of the international reproductive health organization, Populations Services International, in Togo. At a recent conference on HIV and couples, she spoke to IRIN/PlusNews about how she and her team had to rethink what they knew about sex to kick-start Togo's male condom distribution campaign. full testimony
Melanie, "If you won't test, I won't do 'it'"
		Melanie grew up in a large, religious family in the South African seaside city of Port Elizabeth. She talked to IRIN/PlusNews about how HIV touched her life at a young age, and how education and loss gave her not only the ability to start her own HIV organization east of Johannesburg, but also to navigate HIV in her own discordant relationship. full testimony
Mlungisi Dlamini, "We used to have this saying ... 'Any meal might be the last'"
		Mlungisi Dlamini never planned for his future, until he was diagnosed HIV positive. Now working for the South African AIDS lobby group, the Treatment Action Campaign, Dlamini talked to IRIN/PlusNews about how his diagnosis changed his perspective on life. full testimony
Halima*, "You find out very quickly who your friends are"
		In Somalia's conservative Muslim society it is extremely rare for someone living with HIV to speak out about their status, and even more so for a woman. But Halima*, a Somali refugee in Kenya and a mother of four in her fifties, told IRIN her story, which is also part of a recent IRIN Radio Somali programme. full testimony
Musa Njoko, "What made me really mad was the failure to diagnose my TB in good time"
		Musa "Queen" Njoko is a well-known South African gospel singer and motivational speaker, running her own successful business. She was also one of the first women to publicly disclose her HIV-positive status. Njoko spoke to IRIN/PlusNews at the South African TB Conference in the port city of Durban about one of her two bouts with TB, and how late diagnosis put her life at risk. full testimony
Bongi Rubushe, "I think it is good that President Jacob Zuma announced his HIV status"
		Bongi Rubushe, 24, is a medical student at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. She is also working as a volunteer in the national HIV counselling and testing campaign, which aims to encourage 15 million people to be tested by June 2011. IRIN/PlusNews spoke to her at Natalspruit Hospital, east of Johannesburg, where the campaign was launched on 25 April 2010. full testimony

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