HIV testing

Today I went back to the hospital of Saint Camille to interview one of the midwives about what she does. While we were in her office women kept knocking on the door coming and in being shuffled to the corner of the room, reviewing something and then leaving. It wasn’t until about half way through after three or four women had come in that I realized the midwife was reading these women’s HIV test results to them! So while we were doing an interview, women were anxiously waiting outside for their results. When I asked if that was what she was doing the woman replied, yes, but they were all negative this round so it’s okay. I’m assuming if they had been positive she wouldn’t have told the woman while two strangers were in the room, but I don’t know. After the interview I asked to see where they would do the HIV testing, since it was only two doors down. To get and HIV test in the states you are required to wait two weeks for the results to come back, in Africa you wait only 30 minutes. This is because of a few reasons first; if a woman lives in a village it is difficult and possibly expensive for her to travel to the hospital. Also the longer you make people wait the more nervous someone gets and if they think about it too much they might just not want to know. Along with the fact that it isn’t good to be seen going to the hospital too much, people will then assume you have HIV anyways.

The interview went pretty well and afterwards I went to the NGO to see some of the women. Everyone had gone home however, because it was so hot there, except for some children where working on their algebra. There was also one woman, who I know had HIV with her small child. After she left one of the women told us that the NGO has run out of formula, and so she has to breast feed her baby. For those of you who don’t know there is a very high chance of giving your child HIV if you breast feed, but what where the choices for this woman, breast feed and give her child HIV who if it survives can get free ARV drugs, or not feed the baby and it dies….not a good situation to be in.