All HIV is, is a virus

Michael and I spent Saturday at a life skills class for children enrolled in Nyumbani’s Lea Toto program in Kibera. Children of all ages come once a month to learn about HIV and receive support.

Usually, it’s conducted by Lea Toto staff like Daniel (pictured below) but today Susan Gold, a Fulbright scholar from the U.S., assisted in teaching the class.

Susan (pictured below) created a sexual education program for HIV positive children for her Fulbright scholarship and we were lucky to see her in action on Saturday.


Susan told the 15 HIV positive adolescents that all HIV is, is a virus. Having the virus doesn’t make you a bad person and anyone can get the virus. It has nothing to do with being a good or a bad person. It just means that when you have the virus, you have to take care of yourself and take medicine. She went on to explain that just because you have HIV does not mean you have AIDS.


A child asked Susan what she should say to her peers when they tease her and say mean things to her for her HIV status. Susan told the child that people say things because they’re afraid and people are afraid because they don’t know. People talk about HIV and AIDS in a bad way because they don’t know about it, Susan said. She told the child that when her peers tell her she has AIDS, she can correct them and say no I don’t and I won’t get AIDS because I take my medicine.


“So the more you can teach people about what you have then the less afraid they are because there is nothing scary about people who are HIV positive,” Susan said.



As I was sitting there listening to Susan teach, it occurred to me that I’ve been talking about HIV and AIDS in my blog for over a month now. But I’ve never actually given a definition of what HIV is. And Susan’s right, HIV is simply a virus. But because of stigmas surrounding the virus, it’s treated like a personal defect. And the fear surrounding HIV stems from people’s ignorance about the virus.



By definition, HIV is a virus that attacks certain cells of the immune system called the “helper T-cells” or CD4 cells, which are responsible for helping the body to fight off infections. HIV invades CD4 cells, reproducing within the infected cells, and then bursting into the bloodstream. The immune system responds by producing antibodies to fight the virus and making more CD4 cells to replenish those killed. But this immune response is ultimately ineffective. In the late stages of infection, HIV destroys increasing numbers of CD4 cells until the body’s capacity to fight other viruses and bacteria gradually begins to decline. Eventually, the immune system stops functioning, leaving the body defenseless against other infectious agents.

And by definition, Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) is the medical designation for a set of symptoms, opportunistic infections, and laboratory markers indicating that a person is in an advanced stage of HIV infections, with an impaired immune system. Although some people may develops AIDS much sooner, it takes an average of 10 years from the time one is infected with HIV to develop clinical AIDS. As immune functions begin to decline, the body becomes prone to certain opportunistic infections, which vary in different regions of the world, depending upon the locally predominant infectious agents. Thus, it is not AIDS that actually kills a person. It is the opportunistic infections, such as tuberculosis (TB), that kills a person because their immune system is too weak to fight the infection off.



So HIV and AIDS are not the same thing. While HIV is the virus that causes AIDS, a person can live there entire life with HIV and never have AIDS due to antiretroviral drugs. So there is nothing scary about people who are HIV positive. I can kiss, hug, sit on the same toilet seat, drink out of the same cup, eat off of the same plate, and get coughed on by a HIV positive person and not get HIV.



Susan explained to the children the different modes of HIV transmission.
- Mother to Child Transmission (through the birthing process and through breast feeding)
- Sexual intercourse
- Sharing of sharp objects
- Blood transfusion



She also explained the importance of taking antiretroviral drugs and not missing a dose. She told the children that the medicine was their gun against the virus. The antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) allow for children to live long healthy lives, get married, have children and possibly not pass the virus on to their child. Currently in Kenya, 35% of HIV positive mothers pass the virus on to their child. But if a mother has been taking ARVs for a significant period of time, the chances of passing on the virus are small.



I wish more people could take the time to learn about HIV and AIDS and spend time with HIV positive people and realize there’s nothing scary about it. Throughout history, ignorance has stemmed most kinds of discrimination and stigmas. People are scared of the unknown. They make assumptions about what they don’t know and create walls. But if people tore through their ignorance, we would have a more accepting world to live in.