Making a difference: Working together to face HIV

Eunice Nyambe is both a counsellor and a patient with St Francis Home Based Care Programme [Annie Bungeroth]

After losing her husband to AIDS, Eunice Nyambe, 40, decided to take an HIV test.

This was a brave decision. Being HIV positive carries a heavy stigma - despite the fact that in Eunice's country, Zambia, over one in five adults is infected with the virus.

Even braver was her decision, only a fortnight after receiving the positive result, to tell friends and family.

“I wanted to enlighten people to see that if you have HIV then it doesn’t mean that you are going to die immediately,” she says.

At first her family’s reaction was one of shock and disappointment. But Eunice’s approach to her HIV positive status is that with good nutrition and care, she could live for another 20 years.

“Any disease can kill you – people die of malaria after two days,” she adds.

Home Based Care

By speaking openly about her status, Eunice has persuaded her entire family to take HIV tests. Of her seven children, the youngest, a four year old boy, is HIV positive.

Now she volunteers with the St Francis Home Based Care Programme in Livingstone as a counsellor.

The Home Based Care Programme offers simple medical, nutritional and hygiene-based treatment to people living with HIV and AIDS.

Eunice helps to run one of the support groups, which organises simple income-generating schemes such as growing vegetables to sell at market.

Working together

“We are one of the groups in the programme that come together so that we don’t become depressed – we are all positive so we should be working together. I teach people how to live with HIV positive people and we try to support them.”

Eunice became involved in the programme initially as a patient, when she became very ill after the birth of her youngest child. After witnessing the effectiveness of the volunteer-run programme, she decided to become a carer.

Eunice’s passion for encouraging people to find out their status is boundless. She regularly talks to church congregations about the need to get tested, and estimates that for every 50 people she talks to, between 18 to 20 will go to the clinic for an HIV test.

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