ChristopherHuthwaitePhotographer
HIV in Harare
It is estimated that there are 3 million men, women and children who are HIV positive in Zimbabwe. Health care is provided by a mixture of the government, foreign aid agencies and community organisations. The government is unable to provide a comprehensive care system, like everything else in this country it is underfunded and mismanaged.
Many people are unaware of the help they can get and many also go without treatment and medication because they either don't know to access it or are to frightened to admit their status, in a country that still views HIV from an uneducated view point.
During my time in Zimbabwe I met many orphans whose families had been destroyed by the virus and the stigmatism associated with it. In a country where poverty is endemic and all pervasive the children are then forced to live with their extended family, neighbours or even live on the streets.
Many of these families are trapped in a cycle of poverty unable to afford to feed and cloth themselves leaving no money for the mandatory state school fees. This is leaving a generation without the stability of a parental home and also a generation without adequate education.
Because of the governments inability to provide care for all the sick and orphaned in these communities and the aid agencies either stretched to the limit or stopped from providing these services it is left to individuals, the church and family members to help in whatever way they can.
In Sunningdale 2, a high density suburb of Harare, I met Gertrude who because of her daughters illness had set up a HIV support group for people infected and those affected by the disease. The group, named after her daughter, Tembinkosi Women Activists (on HIV and Aids) came about because of the lack of health care access and the stigma associated with the disease.
Gertrude's group does what it can to help the HIV positive members of its community by educating the wider community about the realities of of the disease and providing information on health care services to its members. As part of this project the group also has formed a women's football team to help dispel the hysteria surrounding the disease. However they are facing a mindset that sees HIV not as a treatable preventable disease but through superstitious traditional eyes.
Gertrude tells me that they started to play matches before the mens games in the local leagues. Explicitly stating their positive status as a way to show people that you can live healthily while being infected, as long as you understand the disease and have access to health care. However the superstition won through as it was seen as unlucky for them to play on the same pitches as the men, their status in some way cursing the pitch and those who would subsequently play on it.
In her own community Gertrude does what she can for those she supports. However with no funding and little spare income she can do little more than advise those of the opportunities available to them and be a shoulder for them to lean on.
In many of the communities I visited during my stay there were individuals, with no financial backing, helping and visiting those that were suffering. Doing what little they were able to make the lives of other a little more bearable.