Ryan Darling is a young man in the United States living with HIV. After getting involved in Dance Marathon while attending UCLA, he helped to start Dance Marathon at the College of the Holy Cross. He shares his inspirational story of how Dance Marathon and EGPAF changed his life.
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M'e Mapelaelo Thaisi is a 37 year-old housewife and mother of two in Lesotho who is living with HIV. Her husband and one of her children are also positive, and ‘M'e Mapelaelo has faced significant challenges in staying healthy and keeping her family healthy and happy. But with the support of her husband and EGPAF, she has been able to have an HIV-negative child and have a happy, healthy family. M'e Mapelaelo has shared her story with the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation.
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Jecinta lives in Kenya and she is about 40 years old. In 1998, Jecinta became very sick and was hospitalized several times for malaria and TB. She tried many treatments but nothing seemed to work — she wasn’t getting any better. Finally, Jecinta’s sister-in-law told her she should be tested for HIV because that is what Jecinta’s husband had died from six years earlier.
Jecinta was shocked: She had always thought that her husband died of liver cancer. Not only did Jecinta’s in-laws hide her husband’s HIV status from her for all those years, but they also kicked her and her two children out of their house after her husband’s death.
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A nurse, Florence has a goal to save her fellow health workers from preventable HIV deaths - and she is starting in Busia District Hospital in Kenya, where she works. Like many of her patients, she is also living with HIV. EGPAF met up with Florence during a trip to Kenya's Western Province, where EGPAF is part of APHIA Plus, a five-year, USAID-funded project that includes HIV care and treatment and prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT).
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I have five children--but it should be six. Before my last was born, I had a miscarriage after suffering from an illness while pregnant. It turned out that I was HIV-positive.
My husband, Jimmy, and I were very sad and I told him to get tested too. He was positive as well.
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One day, I was out with my friends and I met a beautiful woman. I fell in love with her and lost control of everything. I left my wife and children to go away with her, and we had unprotected sex. I never suspected anything; she was in good health and beautiful, but she deceived me. She had knowledge of her HIV-positive status and did not tell me anything about it. Everything changed after I became sick. When she saw that I was very sick, she abandoned me. Soon after, I returned home to my wife and children. For a long time I was in denial about what happened to me.
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I was born in Gizegyera village in Kisoro Town Council, South Western Uganda in 1976. I went to school and finished my ordinary-level education, then went for a computer course. I got married in 1995, and my husband and I were blessed with two children, who are now 16 and 15 years old. However, in 2000, my husband fell ill. He was diagnosed with bronchitis, and died shortly after being admitted to the hospital.
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I first became aware of my status about 10 years ago while in third grade in the Copperbelt. At the end of 2008, I was introduced to a support group where I learned a lot about HIV and AIDS. Those of us in the group now know it’s not our fault that we were born with this virus, and that infants can get this during the birth period. In 2012, I was introduced to the Tisamala Teens Group. I would like to thank EGPAF for introducing this programme, because it has really helped people here – especially we young ones – and I hope that it also will help those people who are still ignorant about HIV and AIDS.
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Sweeta and her husband Sarthak represent the sort of success story that make all the long hours and the big caseloads for community health counselors all worthwhile: both are HIV-positive, while their only son, Sartha, is negative.
Sweeta’s first husband didn’t tell her about his HIV status before they got married; in fact, he didn’t do so until he started suffering from TB and having symptoms of AIDS. He died within six months, and Sweeta tested HIV-positive soon afterward
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Kasongo is one of the male partners of a PMTCT beneficiary, and is doing his part to slowly turn the tide of male partner participation in family health in DRC. Originally from Bandundu Province, Kasongo, 37, and his wife Paula, 27, now live in Kinshasa and have had three children.
During her most recent pregnancy, his wife sought ANC services at Binza Maternity, receiving an HIV test and a paper invitation for Kasongo. When she returned home with the invitation, they discussed the opportunity, and he decided to come in to be tested. Despite two previous pregnancies during which his wife also attended ANC at Binza, this was his first time visiting the ANC.
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