What a life changing experience today! Many of us were able to go to CIDRZ which is an AIDS research company and visited the Kamyama Health Care Center. We were all so touched by a woman who recounted her path to seek out her status and is now living a healthy life. Although she has tested positive for HIV, she has gained great strength by being open and sharing her story with others and joining a support group. She has found true happiness by helping others. Her happy ending is that she is married to a man who also has AIDS/HIV and has a healthy baby who has tested negative. It is remarkable how knowledge and openness about one's status can help make many people live a healthy life.
The major goals of this organization are to decrease the stigma against AIDS and to make treatment more readily available. The support group spends countless hours sharing their stories and publicly speaking about the importance of knowing one's HIV status. Younger to middle aged adults are most affected by HIV/AIDS. This puts a great deal of stress on the family structure in Zambia. One of my hopes, is that support groups like this can continue gaining popularity and that in turn, will decrease the amount of orphans and vulnerable children (OVC).
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