Management of HIV/AIDS

But again, I think if you both are on different ends of the spectrum and you're your partners being insistent, do what you need to do to take care of yourself and make sure that they're also doing their things.

So like getting tested regularly, you're using condoms, you're taking your PrEP and or ARVs, you are utilizing the biomedical drugs and assets that are out there to look after yourself and talking with your providers and being open and honest about this is what's going on in my relationship.

On the heterosexual part, that is a different, we call economic difference.

Because sometimes the man is the provider and the woman doesn't work or stay at home.

The last time we spoke about this issue in April, I did allude to the fact that before the USA came in to fund the health sector in countries such as Zambia in the 1980s, when somebody was told they had HIV, it was as though you had been sentenced to death.

But because of interventions by the US through what we call the presidential initiative, no, no, no, AIDS relief, PEPFAR, a lot of people now have a chance at life again because they have ARVs, You have education, treatment, and all that kind of stuff.

So with this funding now, citizens expect to have increased access to free or affordable treatment and prevention for these diseases, safer motherhood and childcare, meaning having improved clinical care supplies and safer facilities for mothers and newborns.

There would also be a larger network of community health workers because they'll be deployed to rural areas, a lot of them, I think about 15,000. or 15,000 to 25,000 out of 40,000 health workers that will be funded for this.

But two, it's just the man just needed to say something and say it.

But t- but the other is just like, what, what care would this woman have or level of understanding of knowledge, or does she have community to reach out to to know about, you know, weight gain and HIV treatment or potentially passing it on or, or, and, and passing, a change in medicines? Um, like I, I, I just to this day, I wonder about that woman and hope she's okay.

So maybe we can talk a little bit about women living with HIV.

[clears throat] Does HIV treatment make you fat?

If you've been, if you've been too thin because of your HIV-

Okay

Those are all signs of reciprocity.

I mean, I used to not be able to say, um, uh, what is it? Um, highly active antiretroviral therapy, right? That was a really big tongue twister for me, which is, you know, HAART, which is the, the drug combination that, um, you know, made AIDS into something that was not just death, right? Highly active antiretroviral therapy.

I can say that very easily now.

Maybe I will get around to reciprocity.

You know, that ninety percent of all people living with HIV, uh, should know their HIV, uh, status, and ninety percent of all people with a diagnosis of HIV receive sustained antiretroviral therapy.

And then the third ninety was that ninety percent of all people receiving ARVs, uh, will achieve viral suppression.

And of course, there were parts of the country that had reported achieving this.

Um, but, um, where are we in terms of that as a country?

And, and this is something that the Minister of Health and the National Department of Health has committed itself to.

Yeah.

And, and what would it take in a South African context to make this drug, to make Len, uh, you know, readily accessible? I mean, we know that we, we have conversations around, um, ARVs and making those accessible, uh, but what would it take in our context to have, uh, Len everywhere? I've seen complaints, uh, you know, from certain people, um, in, uh, Soweto, for example.

I think I saw a message last week about someone in Soweto saying they couldn't find Len.

They are not able to get condoms.

They are not able to get their ARVs, and they are still selling sex there.

So for us, this puts the entire community at increased risk, especially for the new HIV infection.

Is there a new HIV infection? Is HIV somehow expanding and evolving that-- in a way that I'm not aware of? I mean, again, the answer to this problem is to stop having sex for money and figure out something else to do.

Sangomas never tell who the person is.

So he actually believed the sangoma, and by then he completely refused to take the ARVs.

My uncle chose to believe what he understands.

That is what the traditional doctors said.

So that's where we're saying, okay, treatment as prevention.

South Africa's got the largest ARV treatment program in the world.

1.5 million people to date have ever been started on ARVs.

Government has already made provision that every South Afghan who's eligible to treatment will have a free treatment for the rest of their lives.