The last decade witnessed great uncertainty in Nigeria's HIV treatment programme - a period of pseudo-scientists laying claims to cures and operating without checks. A time that help was assumed to be more in miracle centres than in hospitals. A phase of general and entrenched misconception of what HIV really is, its routes of transmission and of lived realities of being HIV positive. It was a time of unending stigma - at home and in healthcare settings, discernible with rejection by loved ones and by society at large. It was a period of recurrent drug stock-outs, of expired antiretroviral medications in circulation. It was cruel faith at those times to be HIV positive, while it took even greater courage and strong will to survive.
I have lost some wonderful friends to AIDS, just like other Nigerians who also lost loved ones. The death of one of my friends was particularly painful, having shared of her struggles and passion to live. This friend was a fighter. She endured unimaginable rejection by almost everyone in her life. She first lost her marriage, driven away from her place of worship, rejected and ejected from her family home where she returned to seek refuge, and later lost her only daughter. She had to battle with a co-infection of TB-HIV at a time that it was simply enough to deal with HIV. Eventually she could no longer fight, she gave it all up. She was one courageous woman who lived in hope despite her many challenges. At the period I referred, very few survived the twin onslaught wrought, first by the virus itself, and, of societal rejection which tends to kill more than the virus. Her story is that of many Nigerians, which a lot of people can readily relate to.
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