I have watched many movies portraying HIV/AIDS information and I would probably enjoy the entertaining bits of the movie more than the informative bits. I have, however, watched “Mothers and Sons”, a movie that has caused me to think more about HIV/AIDS. “Mothers and Sons” is the story of the mother of a young man who died from AIDS. The mother still struggles with making sense of her loss. This movie reminded me so much of how things have changed in Uganda, so many fronts are related to HIV/AIDS. For many diagnosed with HIV today, the infection does not have to dictate an early death as opposed to previous times when there was no treatment. Treatments have come up and have been modified from time to time through extensive research. There is even hope that one day there will be a cure for HIV.
Along these welcomed advances, the sense of urgency among the uninfected to protect themselves has been lost out especially among the younger people who seem to believe that HIV in not a big issue. “Take your medicine and everything will be fine, go for PMTCT services if pregnant and provide ART prophylaxis to exposed infants and they won’t contract it”. I have a feeling that HIV funding programs no longer give much attention and emphasis to prevention counseling among the uninfected individuals. I recently went for an HIV test at a certain health center and I was not given pre or post counseling. I personally thought that pre counseling would inform me of what the test entails, how long it takes and what the results will mean. Since this was not provided, I went ahead with my test and returned for my results. I really expected some counseling before receipt of the results but to my surprise, no post counseling was done either. As I read my results, so much was running through my head. Is it that people with HIV negative results do not receive counseling for living better? Have we come to a stage of assuming that if you test negative once, you can’t later turn positive? Or is it that funding of HIV programs only cater to those who test HIV positive? There is this common slogan “Prevention is better than cure”. Have we forgotten that too? My thinking is that concentrating more on treatment of HIV/AIDS by ignoring the uninfected population will only get us higher rates of HIV transmission.
There are behavioral decisions that people can make to avoid becoming infected and the HIV testing visit is often the best opportunity for people at risk to discuss HIV prevention in a private setting with a knowledgeable professional. Funds may not be available for prevention interventions, but in the testing room, it would be nice to have a conversation with your client and pass on information on how to avoid infections. With this, we could further reduce the number of people being infected with HIV. As far as we have come with HIV treatment, I am convinced that we still have a long way to go and we should not forget the simple things, as they mean a lot. I hope one day there won’t be mothers who will have to struggle with the loss of a child to AIDS.