Ouagadougou — Mamadou Sawadogo, a nurse from Burkina Faso, is a determined and cheerful optimist. He is also HIV-positive. Sawadogo, 34, became infected with the virus after a needle-stick injury at work in 1996, when he was still a student nurse.
Two years later, one of Burkina's leading Aids' activists went public, on national television.
That decision changed his life. Since then, Sawadogo has been campaigning to improve the lives of others living with HIV/Aids in his country and to change what he called a negative national mindset and attitudes to the disease.
"Aids used to be a shameful, taboo subject. People simply got ill and died at home, in isolation, in secret," Sawadogo, told AllAfrica during an interview in the capital Ouagadougou. He said families used all sorts of euphemisms to explain away the deaths - that the person had traveled or other made-up excuses.
But when Sawadogo announced he was HIV-positive, it encouraged others in Burkina Faso to come forward, talk publicly about their status, get tested and become better informed and educated about HIV/Aids, as well as learn how to protect themselves against the disease. After he told his story back in 1998, "the HIV test centre was overwhelmed with people coming to check their status," said Sawadogo.
If Sawadogo's decision to "come out" was a bold one, how he informed those around him that he was HIV-positive was perhaps even more dramatic. First though, he told his then girlfriend, Oumou, now his wife. "I didn't want to impose the enormity of this on her, so I had decided that we should split up. But she wanted to stay with me. She was the one who gave me the strength to talk about it".
Oumou tested negative for HIV. She helps her husband in his Aids awareness campaign, quietly adding her experiences to his. Her only regret, she said, was not being able to have children with Sawadogo, because of the related risks of transmitting the virus to unborn infants.
Sitting side-by side with Oumou during the interview, and smiling wryly at the memory, Sawadogo recounted the effect of the bombshell about his diagnosis on those he loved and trusted during a party he organized, specifically to tell them his story. "I gathered 60 friends at home and told them I was HIV-positive. There was a deathly silence, total silence. I tried to lighten the atmosphere, but I think some people simply didn't want to believe it. They took off. In those days if you went public, it was like a death sentence".
Talking calmly, Sawadogo expressed his frustration at continuing prejudice, superstition and ignorance about HIV/Aids in Burkina Faso. He described how, once he was diagnosed, some health professionals - even nurses and doctors - were reluctant to touch or treat him. That is why, said Sawadogo, "no one dared admit to being infected (with HIV) back then. It took me time to get a grip, to take a hold of myself and my situation and find out more from the doctors".
Since then, there has been some progress in Burkina Faso and more awareness about the reality of HIV/Aids.
"Back then, there was no counseling service, no assistance or support for people who had tested HIV-positive. Even getting the nod from a doctor to have an HIV test was not obvious". And, added Sawadogo, it was important for him to demonstrate that not everyone infected with HIV/Aids was necessarily bedridden, at death's door or emaciated. "I am a living example that you can be an HIV carrier, and still carry on in reasonably good health".
His pioneering move to break the silence about Aids has earned Sawadogo a national decoration by President Blaise Compaore. The Burkinabe leader himself publicly seized the initiative and joined the fight against Aids, allowing himself to be photographed in a publicity/ awareness poster, seated beside a woman who had publicly declared her HIV status.
"These initiatives are what I would describe as part of the social mobilisation that we are organizing in the fight against this scourge, Aids," Compaore told journalists last year. He said what was needed in Africa was "true leadership, to champion the fight against Aids. That would necessarily include the involvement of the authorities at the highest level of the nation, from the executive right down to the people".
Compaore said this reasoning had prompted his decision to personally chair the National Council for the fight against Aids in Burkina Faso and that his government had put in place relevant strategies and programmes to combat HIV/Aids.
The president concluded that he was confident that most Burkinabe now knew about the dangers of the disease, but he lamented that a change in sexual behaviour had not been swifter. "Some people are still not changing their bad habits in the way we would wish. Apart from that hurdle, I have to say that our main problems are overwhelmingly financial and material".
Compaore said donors had promised about US$95m to implement his ambitious five-year plan.
Experts said poverty was a "fertile breeding ground" for HIV/Aids in Burkina Faso and linked the two directly. The high prevalence rate was another factor fuelling poverty said the United Nations' Development Programme's (UNDP) Human Development Index -- based on economic as well as social indicators. Every other person lives below the poverty line in this country, one of the world's poorest.
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
This woeful downward spiral has left about 10 percent of the adult population here infected with the virus. In 2000, the UNDP put life expectancy at 47 years, dropping to 42 by 2015 if the incidence of HIV/Aids continued at the same pace, stunting economic development.
The executive director of UNAIDS, Peter Piot, said "2002 must be the year of major action". He added that the battle against HIV/Aids, in poor countries such as Burkina, was impossible without "massive financial support from outside".
Unstinting, Sawadogo remains central to the AIDS awareness and education campaign on the continent hardest hit by the disease. He travels in and outside Burkina Faso, talking in schools, at major conferences and anywhere he can spread the message that living with Aids is possible.
A beacon and example to others in Africa, Mamadou Sawadogo hopes that his "small" contribution will lead to a better understanding of the disease and help dispel the pervasive image that if you are HIV positive, life is hopeless.
Echoing the thoughts of many others, including Piot, Burkina Faso's leading Aids' campaigner concludes that direct and concrete action must replace all the energetic talk about the disease.
