‘They give me hope’: Beating HIV stigma with community support in Zimbabwe
Al Jazeera
Twenty years since antiretroviral therapy was rolled out in the country, HIV/AIDS patients are living full lives.
Mutare, Zimbabwe – When Wonder Mwatamawenyu tested positive for HIV as a young man more than two decades ago, he thought he had signed his death warrant.
His society told him that HIV and AIDS, which were spreading rapidly in Zimbabwe in the 1980s and 1990s, had no treatment.
Mwatamawenyu tested HIV-positive in 2003 after going to donate blood at a health facility near his house in Matika village, just outside Mutare in eastern Zimbabwe. “I was shocked. I did not believe it,” the 51-year-old father of six told Al Jazeera.
“I later got sick and health workers encouraged me to take antiretroviral therapy (ART) medicine which I have been taking since 2004,” the tall, wiry man said, referring to the standard HIV treatment that was first rolled out in the country that same year.
Mwatamawenyu is one of about 1.3 million people living with HIV in Zimbabwe today. In the 20 years since he was diagnosed, much has changed.
