HIV

We had classes with Dr Vaughn Stannard, the Director of Beautiful Gate and a pediatrician to learn about HIV & AIDS.
Firstly, HIV is the virus and AIDS is simply the last stage of that virus where the person begin the inevitable decline into death. The HIV virus attacks the white blood cells, specifically the CD4 cell, which means that a person with it catches and doesn't recover from diseases and infections that a healthy person would easily be able to fight off.
The kids here are on Anti-Retro virals, which are medicines to slow down the progress of the HIV virus, so they have the possibility of living into their 20's and even more maybe.
What surprised me this week was learning about the discrimination that surrounds HIV. Here it's very stigmatised, so husbands will beat their wives when they find out they have HIV, even though it's usually the husband that gave it to them through infidelity! And parents will abandon their babies, even though it's the parents carrying the virus...the less education a person has, the greater the fear and myths they believe usually. We watched a movie called Yesterday, about how one African woman deals with learning she has it.