When my office becomes an HIV/AIDS counselling and testing space..

Yesterday was the second time my office turned into an HIV/AIDS counselling and testing site...

Last week I walked into my office after lunch (which I should stress is a very VERY communal office space, not a private office by any means) and a woman walked in to be tested for HIV. Instantly my heart went up and I felt for the poor woman, she was extremely fearful and concerned that she would be positive. Later I found out that she was in to be tested because her husband is not faithful and refuses to wear protection. Thankfully regardless of her husband’s behaviour she tested negative.

Yesterday, my heart went through the roof when a young mother and her maybe 2 year old daughter walked into the door to be counselled and tested. I give a lot of credit to the man who does the counselling and testing, although I am not fluent enough in Swahili yet, his calm mannerisms and tone do an excellent job of ensuring that the tested individuals are relatively relaxed. This situation was a lot different then last weeks. The husband of the woman being tested is HIV + and is also with another woman who happens to be HIV+. They are both on ARVs (anti-retroviral drugs) however she came in (once again) presuming she going to test positive. To ensure that the results were certain, he did two tests. Thankfully and realistically surprisingly she was negative which also means that the child she had with that man is negative.

For those who haven’t seen how HIV tests are done here they are very simple and results only take 5-10minutes to get (unlike the 2 week waiting process in Canada). For those interested in the process I have decided to include a description of how it is done below.
However, before explaining the testing though, it’s important to clarify that there are three possible types of HIV one can have. If infected, you can have type one, two, or one and two (I have been told that this one generally occurs if someone with type one HIV partners with someone with type two HIV, then often both partners will have both type one and two). And to not waste too much time typing, HIV and AIDS are two different things and no, people cannot contract HIV by sitting next to one another, hugging, kissing, coughing/sneezing, or realistically it is extremely difficult to contract it from a drop of blood.. (just trying to throw out some of the misconceptions about the illness).

To test someone, a tiny needle is used to prick a small hole in one of the fingers. A small sample of the blood is collected from the finger and then transferred onto a small HIV indicator that slightly resembles an at home pregnancy test. Thereafter a small amount of testing solution is applied to the drop of blood and you await the results (sorry for the lack of technical terms, its hard to translate them! Haha). Similar to an at home pregnancy test in Canada, lines appear on the open indicator pad. One line is the control and should always show up to ensure the test worked properly, if only the one line is present (in the right spot on the test strip) then that means the person is HIV negative. If two lines show up, depending on where they show up on the strip, that means that you could be type one or type two HIV positive. And finally, if three lines show up that means that you are type one and two HIV positive.

While I was in Botswana (where statistics stated that 1 in 3 people were HIV+) I was told that due to a common fear of needles and the fact that a lot of people travel a long distance to be tested and their lifestyle is not as conducive to waiting a few weeks for results, someone created and they have adopted these rapid easy testing mechanism. And from the little bit that I have witnessed here and in Botswana, I think that this is one of the best inventions in terms of potentially slowing/stopping the spread of the illness especially in countries where HIV is very prevalent. In terms of prevalence here, it is much less than it was in Botswana. I have heard a range of values ranging from 1 in 10 people to a 1 in 7 or 1 in 18... I don’t know which is correct but I do know that the prevalence hasn’t reach epidemic proportion yet like it has in Botswana (and hopefully never will).

Needless to say that every time someone walks in to be tested my heart begins to race and I can’t help but feel anxious for them (whether they actually feel anxious about being tested or not seems to be hard to tell so far) and sad for some of the stories I have been hearing. It seems that woman and children bear the grunt of many of the societal issues that plague the Morogoro region.. However, to keep this blog more on the positive side of things (and to avoid the graphic conversations surrounding the issues here) I decided not to post these stories, at least not for now!