To achieve ultimate victory in the fight against HIV/AIDS, we must empower individuals living with HIV to be able to disclose their status.
They should also take their antiretroviral therapy (ART) without fear of stigma or discrimination.
This will help us fight stigma.
Secrecy perpetuates fear and guilt, while disclosure brings freedom and access to support.
I experienced this first-hand when I tested positive in 1999.
The fear of disclosure was overwhelming, but ultimately, it brought me liberation and empowerment.
By promoting disclosure and public treatment, we can reduce stigma, increase support, and ultimately win the war against HIV/AIDS.
The feeling of being alone is experienced by someone who has just been diagnosed HIV positive.
The guilty feeling is overwhelming, especially if one is married. With time, one suspects that everyone now know their status. Maybe they could be talking behind his or her back. That feeling pushes one to withdraw and hide like a criminal on the wanted list.
When I tested HIV positive in 1999, my first hurdle was how I was going to tell my wife, relatives, friends and colleagues.
It took me nearly three years before I could disclose the status to my wife.
I later gathered the guts to inform my relatives and friends.
The reason it took me so long was due to the fact that I was tested while I was undergoing treatment for TB. This ravished my body and for three or so years my sex drive was non-existent and hence my wife and l were not getting intimate.
As I recovered, my sex drive was restored. I felt obliged to tell my wife. She needed to make an informed decision, whether to stay with me or to move on.
She could start a new life elsewhere in the event that she tested negative.
We were relatively young then, with her being 25 and I being 34. After much grappling with myself on how to disclose my status to my wife, I finally let the cat out of the bag.
To say Mai Simba, my wife, was shocked, would be an understatement,
She was devastated to the bone and for a long while she could not speak to me. When she finally did, she asked me for how long I had known that I was HIV positive. I had to tell her the truth.
Slowly, after some lengthy silent processing, she gained her usual composure.
She, however, refused to get tested and opted to continue living with me as a married couple.
That is how we began to use protection for the next 18 years for fear of infecting her.
Disclosure comes from God because it is a life and death issue. Lots of courage is needed to face the backlash from one's partner and colleagues and sometimes from children born HIV positive.
In my case, I expected backlash from our second born daughter, now aged 31, and mother to three HIV negative boys.
She was born HIV positive due to my reckless, lustful conduct.
Disclosure, if handled well, can be a life changing activity. Besides being a safe way of handling positive living responsibly, it can be a time to improve your marital relationship. Disclosure brought us closer together as a family, adding new value.
As couples, disclosure is that Damascus moment where one realises mistakes made along the life journey.
Couples can embrace a new life that needs care and unity of purpose. There is need, therefore, to apologise to one's spouse and chart a new path free from promiscuity.
There is a need to apologise to children born HIV positive.
I have never loved my wife as I do now due to the mistakes I made and how she has forgiven me .
If only I could rewind the clock, I would not take that path again.
The other hurdle we need to overcome is the self stigma and blame experienced by many people living with HIV.
The self stigma and self blame are a result of the frightening and shameful way HIV has always been viewed.
People living with HIV have not committed any crime because they got infected while doing very normal activities done by almost everyone so there is need to let them go on with their lives just like everybody else.
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People living with HIV ought to take their ART tablets wherever and whenever they need to without any fear of discrimination.
I tested HIV positive at a time when there was no medication and the only tablets available then was the Cotrimoxazole, an antibiotic that wades off infections.
With a depressed immune system, the body becomes a playground for all infectious diseases.
Cotri became very important and helped many of us cross the Rubicon of HIV/AIDS from 2004 to around 2010 when I was first initiated on ART
My wife then got tested and was initiated on ART in 2017.
With good nutrition, a free mind, and purpose for life, she had not been ill. She had been unknowingly HIV positive all along.
In conclusion, l believe strongly that the HIV/AIDS battle can be won through disclosure and public uptake of ARVs.
For over two and a half decades, I have managed the condition through adherence to treatment, be it for TB, and later ARVs.
Science works. I look forward to the day when people will be vaccinated against HIV.
