Nine years living with HIV

If you have ever thought being contacting HIV, the virus that start Aids is the end of the road, you better think again. Henry Mahwayo would change your fears into hope. Geoffrey Kapusa chats with the 29 year old man, who is still single but has hopes of getting married and have children one day.

I have met Henry several times and the transformation was so vivid the last times I met him. Dressed in a dark brown jacket and a nice pair of black trousers, Henry usually likes to finish off his outfit with a pair of sandals. But the day he showed up for this interview, Henry was wearing black shoes.

In 1999 Henry Mahwayo voluntary tested for HIV/Aids and was found positive. Several factors attributes to his status, but as he narrates his story, unprotected sex--fashionable in the early 90’s-- was the major cause of his lifetime ordeal.

“Happiness, those days, meant drinking beer and sleeping with women without condoms. When you talked of condoms you were deemed uncivilized,” he said looking straight into my eyes.

However, Henry developed a health situation and coupled with a series of deaths in his family, included his mother, brothers and sisters, and a blood donation exercise in at Kamba in Blantyre forced him to know his blood status.

“I don’t have any brother or sister. I had four sisters and three brothers who have all died of the HIV/Aids. My brothers and sisters died in 1996, 1999 and in 2004. My mother died in 2006. Apparently my mother separated from my father in 1981.” Henry narrates his story.

But then, a ray of hope never left Henry, the only surviving member of the family. In 2002 he learnt that government was now giving out free Anti Retroviral drugs (ARVs) to only those who were ‘very sick’.

Henry’s condition by then was not ‘serious’ despite being HIV positive.

Three years later, Henry’s legs started swelling due to what he thought was malnutrition and lack of blood. In medical terms he had developed cancer of the legs.

Two years later Henry’s condition worsened, prompting him to seek medical attention at the Lighthouse at Kamuzu Central Hospital in Lilongwe.

“I went for another HIV test at the Lighthouse and was told to go there a week later to get the results, which came out positive.”

By June 21 st 2007, Henry was put on an ARV treatment after receiving canceling. However, the pain on his swelling legs continued. Two months later doctors changed his dosage.

Four months down the line, Henry visited the Tiyanjane Clinic at Queen Elizabeth where a new drug Vincristine administered however nothing changed. He then started experienced a continued numbness on his swolen legs and was then advised to stop taking Vincristine.

Today Henry is back on ARV and is now able to put on shoes because of the improvements made on his swelling legs. He also takes other supplements like Antilip Tea and Chitosan Capsules which he also uses to boost his immunity.

Henry also takes Sibusiso, a ready food supplement which he got following the advice he got from the Secretary for Nutrition, HIV/Aids Dr Mary Shawa.

“I have the Sibusiso Ready Food Supplement Voucher from the Department of Nutrition, HIV/Aids in collaboration with Gift of Givers Foundation.”

Government of Malawi through the Office of President and Cabinet put in place the initiative to assist people living with HIV/Aids to live positive and have their diet complete by among other things, giving them a tin of milk, 2 vouchers of Sibusisio at K400 each, thus subsidizing the cost of K1,300.00 to just K900.00.

On the role of the media, Henry says it is doing enough though he thinks the target group, meaning those with HIV positive must receive a special attention as the perception to the HIV/Aids messages differs from those positive and those negative.

“All you need is talking to people with the problem. An HIV Positive person can better advise those who are positive better than those who are negative.”

Responding to the need for positive writing on HIV/Aids stories that usually suffers stigma in coverage by most media houses, an Association for Journalists Against Aids has since been formed following a workshop conducted by Media Desk of Zimbabwe, an arm of South Africa Against Aids (Safaids) initiative.

On a very positive side of the story, Henry hopes to get married to his HIV negative girlfriend.

“I told her am HIV positive and she thought I was joking. We went to QECH in January 2008 for testing. By then we had not yet started sleeping together. Since then we use condoms all the time and I enjoy sex without feeling like losing something.”

And who said HIV Positive people will never be fathers and or mothers? Henry smiles and through his eyes I could see hope and faith in his future life.

“I would like to have kids at one time. It is possible to have a wife and kids. The doctors tell me that it is possible to have kids who can be negative and my girlfriend is aware of the information available about people living with HIV/Aids.”

With his Junior Certificate of Education, Henry can hardly get employed and is staying in a house without water and electricity and hardly pay for his K1, 500.00 house rent.

Hope is the last thing Henry will make sure to lose in his precious life.

The Author, Geoffrey Kapusa is a TVMalawi Producer and Presenter and also a committee member of the Association Journalists Against Aids, formed following a two day workshop with SafAids recently in Blantyre, Malawi.

Malawi Journalists renew Aids fight

Journalists in the country have formed a renewed their commitment with the aim to consolidate the provision of information related to HIV and Aids in the media. The grouping named Association for Journalists against HIV/Aids was formed on Tuesday at a meeting that was held at Mount Soche Hotel in Blantyre.

The association was a combination of various media organisations that are into fighting HIV and Aids after realising the gap that have been existing between reporting HIV and Aids related issues and the new intervations that are being introduced in the fight against the pandemic .

During the meeting, which was financed by a Zimbabwe based organisation, Southern Africa HIV and AIDS Information Dissemination Service (Safaids) it was observed that a number of interventions have been introduced worldwide which the people of Malawi have not information to.

Safaids Media Liasion Officer Tariro Makanga Chikumbirike said issues of HIV and Aids are cross cutting so it was imperative that journalists of all specialities should be part of the fight against the pandemic.

 “Aids issues are no longer health issues, they are in politics, they are in social and even in sports,” she said.

Chikumbirire particularly was impressed with the presence of Malawi News sport Editor Pilirani Kachinziri at the meeting saying it spoke volumes of how issues of HIV and Aids has really affected the Malawi society of all aspects.

During the delegates derived all media houses in the country elected BNL journalist Rex Chikoko as its chairperson while Villant Ndasowa of FirstWave Media was elected the vice.  Ministry of Information Journalists Everson Kalanda was elected Secretary while Richard Chirombo of Africa News.

TVM Geoffrey Kapusa, MBC Dorophy Kachitsa, Joy Radio Henry Haukeya and Edith Mkwaila and Star Radio Mabvuto Zamadunga were elected as members.

 

Baby born out of passion

BY RICHARD CHIROMBO

Are tragedies like the one involving cyanide-laced Tylenol in the United States of America, which claimed seven lives in 1982 and received front page, top-of-the-news coverage while the issue of HIV and AIDS languished in the agenda-setting media, things of the decades now gone by? Will such experiences as HIV and AIDS news taking four years then, along with 20 000 deaths of citizens who would otherwise have done better with requisite information from journalists, before the media begun to accord coverage to such news merely history in this new era?

The wish is; if only they could be. The reality, however, is different; that is, if you talk about Malawi. While the Southern African country has been hard hit by the HIV and AIDS pandemic, the media has largely played a detached role or, where efforts have been made to highlight the same, the efforts have been but a scratch on the surface. Largely, this has meant covering what other organizations have done in this area, mostly, though, without evidence-based articles as what these organizations say is taken as gospel truth. No verification, whatsoever, whether any organization claiming to have carried out research really did so. What with assertions that some organizations cook research findings!

All the while, over 900,000 people call them innocent citizens, or one-in-seven adults, are infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Every six minute, the average time it takes for one to finish an average meal, someone’s sister, brother, mother, father, uncle, aunt, guardian, or step-what, denounce their Malawian citizenship to death. 87,000 deaths occur annually, mostly of productive citizens of the impoverished, sub-Saharan Africa country. And this is according to the National AIDS Commission, a body mandated to coordinate the response- never again say,’ the fight’-  to HIV and AIDS in Malawi.

But, just like in the cyanide-laced Tylenol case in the US, the media in Malawi lives in 1982. That might be the reason reporting is still Luke-worm, the response that of migratory birds on recess, and the effects devastating.

No! No! No! No! No! No! No!  The mood seemed to say when Malawian journalists, courtesy of Southern Africa HIV/AIDS Information Dissemination Service (Safaids), met from July 15-16 at Mount Soche Hotel, Blantyre, to bring an end to this self-detachment and Luke-worm response to the HIV and AIDS pandemic through a new look organization that is the other word for commitment- Association for Journalists against HIV and AIDS (Ajah). Waving a new banner of commitment that promises to bring change to the way information is treated, these journalists agreed to move away from detachment to partners in development; from passive observers to participants- a form of new war, fought by the mighty pen and unquenched passion. The wall is broken, a new banner unfurled, a new dawn born- even though it may be that we are in the midst of a war the Malawi media never really begun over 25 years ago.

It may not have been of their own making, though, as the pandemic, and information about it, was largely suppressed in terms of impact during the early stages of the pandemic when Malawi was ruled by a doctor of repute in the name of Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda. To say, or write, that there was a pandemic wrecking havoc and threatening to undo social-economic development gains while a doctor sat on the throne would be tantamount to treason, especially in an environment where intellectual discourse was treated as anathema to development and, consequently, muzzled.

But what about 1994, when Malawi ushered in a second Republic and people were free to express themselves. Where had the media been to, drinking free coffee and tea? All these questions might have been answered by the zeal, enthusiasm, commitment, resolve, and passion evident in the faces of the 23 journalists gathered at Mount Soche. No need to live in the past; let’s just draw lessons from it, and start to respond to present health challenges- Tuberculosis, Malaria, Meningitis, pneumonia, high mortality and morbidity rates, among others- including HIV and AIDS, it was unanimously agreed.

The passion that coloured the meeting could not escape the eyes of Tariro Makanga Chikumbirike, Safaids Head of HIV and AIDS Communications and Knowledge Management (Hackm), who applauded Malawian journalists for taking the initiative to, among other things,  promote the dissemination of information among fellow practitioners’ promote participation of a wide range of people on issues of HIV and AIDS; and provide the platform for debate as regards the pandemic.

 “Journalists cannot be divorced form issues of HIV and AIDS. Additionally, citizens in the sub-Saharan Africa need to know about these issues for them to make informed decisions,” said Chikumbire, her faith so strong in the adage,’ knowledge is power’.

Her main worry was, “We can not reach a comfortable situation if prevalence remains high in our region; if productive citizens continue to die; if the media are mum. All this because HIV and AIDS is not merely a health issue, it is cross-cutting- agriculture, economies, culture, religion, all are affected. Unless we mainstream HIV and AIDS, we will be scratching on infertile ground”, and, then, we shall all be losers.

Losers in the 21^st Century? Oh! No! Not with Malawian journalists, anymore. Not with Ajaa! Ask Rex Chikoko, Chairperson for the organization.

“This marks the end of cases, in the past, when media houses presented different facts about the same HIV and AIDS issue; when journalists only interviewed top officials on HIV and AIDS issue; when journalists looking for information had no one-stop-information centre- now we have plans to establish a resource centre where journalists shall get information. This will possibly reduce the visible lack of harmony when it came to HIV and AIDS facts,” said the soft-spoken Chikoko.

He feels that, through this platform, journalists will be able to propagate their agenda-setting role as they reach out to people. The emphasis will be on promoting informed information.

Even Villant Ndasowa, the one who coordinates Safaids programmes in Malawi, feels that a new dawn is here at last; in as far as the media response to the pandemic is concerned in the country of 12 million. Informed journalists are an informed nation, she added.

“Journalists will working together and one of the ways to achieve this will be through publication of a newsletter, which I hope will help a lot in exposing the ills about HIV and AIDS. We also hope that through the committee that has been elected, the media response to the pandemic will be well-coordinated and behavioural-changing,” said Ndasowa.

The committee entrusted with running the affairs of Ajaa is comprised of journalists from both sides of the media divide: print and media. These are: Rex Chikoko, Chairperson; Villant Ndasowa, Vice Chair; Everson Kalinda, Secretary; Richard Chirombo, Treasure; Vuto Zamadunga; Geoffrey Kapusa, member; Dorothy Kachitsa, member; Edith Mkwaila, member; and Henry Haukeya, member.

They come from the following media houses, or organizations: Malawi News; First Wave Media; Ministry of Information; Mawa; Malawi Television; Malawi Broadcasting Corporation, and Joy radio, respectively.

They will be expected to put into gear the two factors that, research in the US has revealed, often put an issue on the national agenda: make sure that HIV and AIDS news appear on the front page, and; that the State President gives a talk about the issue raised during his various national tours of duty. These will put to rest what happened in one of the countries to first register cases of HIV and AIDS: a news article did not appear on the front page of The New York Times until May 25, 1983- two years into the pandemic, 12 months less than The Los Angeles Times, and 10 months later than The Washington Post. Even so, American President Ronald Reagan did not give a speech about AIDS until May 1987, an unbelievable six years into the epidemic, at a time when 35,121 cases had been reported by the Centre for Disease Control.

From this experience, Ajaa really has to work hard to make sure that, in the end, either president Bingu wa Mutharika talks about an issue raised by the organization as, an agenda-setter, or the little HIV virus  grows big enough to appear on the big newspaper/magazine/newsletter print. Perhaps loud enough and visible enough to make the mark on the mighty microphone and screen.

Passion. Is the buzz word. And everything becomes possible with Association for Journalists against HIV and AIDS.

A new baby is born. Azimayi kodi mulipo: nthungululu bwaaa!!!