RIGHTS-GHANA: The Deafening Silence Around Being Tested Positive

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Isabella Gyau Orhin

ACCRA, Sep 5 2003 (IPS) - Diagnosed with HIV three years ago, Kabuki is determined not to let her sexual partner know.

"He has lived with me for many years but has not bothered to perform the marriage rites. He thinks he is taking me for a ride. Why should I tell him?" she asks.

Thirty- five-year-old year old Kabuki, who hails from one of Ghana’s HIV endemic areas, says she is afraid her partner will abandon her as has been the case of many other women who were brave enough to reveal their status.

"I need his assistance more now than ever. I need to buy drugs every now and then and if I don’t get money from him, I have nowhere else to go to," she says.

What makes the matter even more disturbing for Kabuki is that the man has already found himself another lover, one who she says is bent on snatching him from her. "For the mean time, I think we can share," she says. If only the new lover knew what she was really getting. But Kabuki has no regrets. "It serves her right," she says.

But it is not only Kabuki who is hiding her HIV status from her partner. Most of the women who live in her town Agormanya, in the Eastern Region of Ghana, are keeping their status secret.

Of the 1314 pregnant women who consented to have their HIV test done under a programme called Prevention of Parent to Child Transmission, at the St.Martins Catholic Hospital at Agormaya, 163 were diagnosed as positive.

A female baker who tested positive six months ago says she has not informed her sexual partner whom she has been with for the past six years. "The only person who knows of my status is my father," she says.

In the case of Auntie Sisi (also not real name) she returned from Takoradi where she has been living with her husband for many years to treat a lingering disease only to be told she is HIV positive. "Whenever my husband comes to visit, I am unable to tell him. I am afraid he will not support me any longer and I need the money to survive," she says.

The issue of disclosing one’s health status has become a controversial one in recent times. While rights activists have been advocating for a policy which makes it mandatory for partners of people diagnosed with HIV and other sexually transmitted infections to be informed, the new policy of the Ghana Health service says an individual should have the sole right to disclose their health status and such rights must be respected by health workers.

What this means is that any health worker who opens his or her mouth too wide could be dragged to the law courts.

The Service say proper counseling could solve the problem of non disclosure. Naami, not real name), is 55 years of age and was diagnosed as positive five years ago. "Although I stay in a family house nobody cares for me, even my twin brother has rejected me and now I am all alone." Naami’s husband has also abandoned her and found himself another partner.

Korsi’s story is no different from Naami, even though he was diagnosed only nine months ago, Korsi, looks very sick. His wife has eloped with another man upon learning of her husband’s status. Korsi’s main concern is how to pay the school fees of his seven-year old son who has been sent home. "The fees have been increased and now that I cannot work, it is difficult to pay," he says. He is also mourning the loss of his best friend who abandoned him after learning of his status. "When times were good, I use to help him with financial assistance and vice versa. He was even close to me than my wife. Now he does not even pass the road in front of my house and it hurts," said Korsi sadly.

According to Dr. Richard Noamesi Amenyah, of the St. Martins Hospital at Agomanya, of 1558 people who consented to have Voluntary Testing and Counselling (VCT) last year, 502, or 30 percent, tested positive. He said so far about 664 people are living with HIV in the Manya Krobo district.

"People could hardly walked in here two years ago to do voluntary testing but these days it is slowly becoming a more common phenomena,: he says. Dr Amenyah says the reluctance to test is because there is still a huge stigma attached to being HIV positive and this attitude existed even among some of the health workers. When people were brought in with tuberculosis and other opportunistic infections and they were coughing, it was difficult for some nurses to even get close to them," he says.

Dr. Amenyah says with counseling, the stigma in the health sector has been reduced considerably. He says HIV should be seen as another chronic disease like Diabetes and as such all must accept HIV patients.

Dr. Amenyah says Agomanya is working very hard to control the prevalence rate in the area. The rate which was 13.4 percent about a decade ago, one of the highest in the country, has been reduced to 6.6 percent presently. "We are not complacent at all, we are still working very hard to further reduce the incidence," he adds. (ENDS/IPS/AF/WA/HD/CR/IG/SM/03)

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