HIV technologies in the ‘post-ART’ era

Mark Davis and Corinne Squire

Paper presented at International Society of Critical Health Psychology, Sixth Biennial

Conference 2009 in Lausanne, Switzerland, 8-11 July.

. . . the reason that I'm confused at the moment is because of a remark made to me by [my doctor] when I actually raised my sexual behaviour as an issue during the clinical session … … He said that I was more, I had more chance of passing on hepatitis B than I did of passing on HIV given the low detectable, the undetectable level of my viral load … … I walk about with those words reverberating in my head, not knowing whether I can believe them or not … … I've no idea because my medical knowledge isn't developed enough to know (Alasdair: 1)

Mhiki: (Xhosa, translated) With regard to things that are helpful to is {some}one who is the one living with HIV firstly, you must accept it. When you are told that you have HIV, accept that because that is what will make you live a long life. Secondly, it’s good behaviour. If you were drinking and or smoking, you must stop all that. Thirdly, if you are taking medication, you must take your medication as prescribed. Finally, if you have a boyfriend, you must condomise…(English) So, I decided to tell my family but, I can’t say what my family say {couldn’t be sure what my family would say} because they like me and they were worried of me. But since I told my family, I’m feeling very well…

… and even now if I’m sick, they know now what is happening…If you go to the support group, there is a lot of things you can get from the support group. If you’ve got a problem, you can share with the other people in the support group…if I have a problem {with side effects} I can phone Sister (name) and go to (hospital name). If I don’t have money I can borrow it from my neighbour and when I come back the sister give R20 to pay the neighbour back…I try to eat good food and even exercise because, every Saturday I go to play a netball. We’ve got a netball club. So, I’m doing exercise… And I think there is a problem between HIV people and the government because, the government doesn’t want to give the disability grant. They want to wait until you can die before they give you the grant and, it’s a problem if you can’t have food. It’s a problem. I don’t know what we can say to the government to give us the money because I can’t go to work. I’ve got two kids and I’m on and off {in health}