Peer educators are now working from hospitals as the dissemination of HIV/AIDS information turns intensive in Zimbabwe.

Every Thursday two peer educators will be at the hospital sharing ideas and information with those infected with the virus as well as living with full blown AIDS who will have come to get antiretroviral drugs (ARV’s). These patients get to be helped at the Annex Ward which is mainly for those suffering from tuberculosis and other serious viral disease like HIV and AIDS. Most of them come to collect the free ARV’s provided by the government through government hospitals for those in need.

A session by the peer educators that I attended was interesting as they were discussing the issue of disclosure in households as well as what to do when both partners all know that they are infected.

“There are situations whereby a wife goes on an ARV course and does not tell her husband or a husband does the same thing without letting the wife know of his status. There are children who have from birth been told to take pills yet they do not know what they are taking them for,” said one of the peer educators.

A lady who contributed to the discussion said that women are the ones most disadvantaged in homesteads as they can not say much to their husbands with regards getting tested or initiating condom use even when married.

“Our husbands do not want us to talk of condom use sighting that as we are married there should be no talk of condoms and they also beat us if we tell them of going for testing,” she said.

All who were gathered agreed to this scenario saying that polite means should be used if married men are to be convinced to go for testing. Another contributor who was male said that women with husbands who were in shortage of understanding should tell them soon after finding out they are infected and also tell them that they are already using ARV’s.

“If your husband does not understand just tell him that you are on ARV’s and that you tested positive. If he does not want to get tested or start using the drugs as well it will be up to him,” he said with much applause from the crowd.

The discussion made life easy for the patients who were numerous in number and all looked in need of much counseling with regards how they are perceived in their homes. The way they were responding to this discussion showed how stigmatized HIV/AIDS patients are and how difficult it is to bring up the issue of being positive to family members as well as those in the community that one comes from.

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