Norman Magaya is an MSF mental health nurse working with the discharge team at Harare Central Hospital Psychiatric unit. He joined MSF in 2008 and worked for the Gweru and Gokwe projects before joining the Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison and Harare Central Hospital mental health teams.
MSF researcher Emilie Venables has spent several weeks conducting in-depth interviews with patients at MSF’s AIDS unit in Kinshasa, as well as care-givers and health staff.
This World AIDS Day I'd like to share three testimonies from HIV patients who are publicly sharing their stories here in South Kivu.
Rob blogs about the challenges facing HIV patients in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Today we think not just about tuberculosis, the mycobacterium that was isolated on a glass slide in a lab many years ago today… We think of those suffering from it and the many lives ended by it… the mothers, brothers, fathers, daughters and grandmothers. Those that beat it and more importantly those who are fighting… and are sadly losing… And the billions at risk of suffering this fate just because they breathe in… and out… and in…
I contracted Ebola through midwifing a pregnant woman. Unfortunately, the woman was infected and she died of the virus as well as her baby...
I lost my relationship of 10 years because of Ebola...
Shortly before I left the U.S., I watched President Obama welcome Ebola survivors who had worked during the epidemic in Liberia to the White House, and greet them with handshakes and hugs. At the time, it struck me that beating those incredibly difficult odds was truly something to celebrate, and that those survivors, now members of a tiny club, must be among the happiest and most grateful people on earth.
