MY name is Aminat -Agboola Alli, and I am the Lagos State coordinator of the Network of People Living with HIV and AIDS in Nigeria (NEPWAN). I was at the dying stage, which is what the doctors call the AIDS stage when I got to know about my status. Consequently, I was placed on Anti-Retro Viral drug (ARV), and within six months of being placed on the drug, I revived. Within one year, my virus load had become undetectable. That was in 2005. Invariably, what ARV does is that it reduces the amount of virus in the body and ever since, it has remained undetectable. Being undetectable however does not mean that I no longer have the virus; it just means that it is at the dormant, and I can give birth to a child, who would be negative. Doctors advise that I should maintain that undetectable level by adhering strictly to the dosage of the drug, which I have to take for life. Usually when the viral load is suppressed, you’d look good and your rate of infection to others is minimal.
At the moment, I have two children, whom I gave birth to through natural birth process and who are HIV negative. My husband is negative as well. It is important to note that he knew of my HIV status even before he got involved with me. However, practising unprotected sex with him still comes with a level of risk, despite my undetectable viral level, because there is still that probability of him getting infected. But the probability is low, because being a woman; I am at the receiving end. So I just make sure that my vagina, when we’re having sexual intercourse is not tight. I make sure that I am wet, so that there is no bruise of any kind; because HIV passes a through a medium, which is blood. And blood cannot just come out, except there is a bruise or cut.
On stigma and stigmatisation of victims
First of all, I’d like to say that we are not victims. We say we’re not victims because, as you can see, we are looking good. And you’re not likely to know that I have the virus because it is not written on my face, until I open up to you. And because the ARV drugs are available – they’ve been free until recently when they began to place some charges, people are accessing them. Although some people, for fear of being stigmatised in their locality, commute to long distance to access the drug, the fact remains that they still access it. And because of that, they are looking good and are no longer dying. What’s killing people more today is self-stigma or stigma and discrimination from outside world.
Be that as it may, stigma is minimal now, compared to some years back, and that is because a lot of things have been put in place. I am in Lagos, which is a responsive state, and we have an anti-stigmatisation law, which means that I can take you to court if you stigmatise me. But in Nigeria as a whole, the bill is still in process. Also in Lagos, we have the Lagos State Workplace Policy on HIV/AIDS, in which we want to encourage business organisations to employ people living with HIV AIDs, so that they can work and not be discriminated against. That, is yet to be signed.
Systematic discrimination
Discrimination still occurs and there are instances where people living with HIV/AIDS have been discriminated against during the process of job recruitment. However, they don’t tell them. A typical example would be that you’ve been interviewed, got to the final stage, gone for health screening, and then suddenly dropped. So, usually you go your way, wondering why you’re so unlucky. But after sometime, you begin to fall sick, go to the hospital, do a screen test and eventually find out that you are HIV positive. But at that time, you really can’t take any legal action because it is a bit hard to establish the connection.
Contracting the virus
There are different modes of infection, namely mother to child, blood transfusion, sharp object and sexual intercourse. I know my mother didn’t give birth to me with HIV and I didn’t do blood transfusion, so it could only have been through any of the two others. But I’ll tell you that I practised unprotected sex; so there is high probability that I got it through that medium. At first nobody thought it was HIV. All our concentration was on Tuberculousis, but the illness persisted even after I’d been treated for tuberculousis. It was at that point that someone suggested to my sister that I went for HIV test. Looking back, if my sister had said, ‘no, my sister can’t have HIV’, maybe I would have been dead by now. Like I said, I was at the AIDS stage; but with appropriate treatment, and support and love from my family, I was able to recover and get back on my feet.
Did she try to contact any of her sexual partners?
I practised what we defined in our field as serial monogamy, which is when one has one sexual partner at a time. I contacted at least the last person I had sexual relationship with and he wasn’t infected. So it didn’t occur to me to even think about the person before him. I also remember that my last partner didn’t opt for the test initially, so I assumed it was him. By the time I finally thought about the other person and went to look for him, I was told he had died. So I concluded that it must have been him.
On the decline in awareness campaign
Even those working on the field feel that HIV is been over-flogged. And that is why the awareness campaign has been on the decline. There is however need to step up action against HIV infection, especially with young people, because we found that more than 80% of infection is still through sexual intercourse and prevalent amongst people between ages of 15 to 49. We should step up action on reaching out to both in-school youth and out-of-school youths and equip them with Comprehensive Sensuality Education. They need to know that they can’t just go experimenting and endangering themselves, or think that HIV/AIDS danger is no longer out there.
Challenges facing HIV positive people
The major challenges we face is that from October this year, some treatment centres have started putting charges on the treatments such as pick up of drugs, follow up lab test and some of us cannot afford it. I speak not as Aminat, but as coordinator of Lagos State Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS in Nigeria (NEPWHAN). Even though it has not been proven, HIV has the face of poverty, since most of those living with it live below the poverty line.
