funding with locally tailored strategies to fight HIV/AIDS.
In a small home tucked away on a side street in the city of
Kaduna in northern Nigeria, Aisha Yakubu watches her son
take out three bottles of prescribed medications from a dresser
in his bedroom. The eight-year-old boy ignores the kittens
meandering around his legs as he twists open the caps of each
of the white bottles.
Every day he takes anti-viral drugs: 200 miligrams of Aluvia,
150 miligrams of Truvada and half a tablet of Septrin. "I think
he contracted the HIV from his mother," Yakubu says.
About six years ago, she found the boy lying in a heap of
rubbish in an abandoned building. She picked him up, took
him home and has been raising him as her son ever since.
Together, they strive to overcome the challenges and stigmas
surrounding those infected with HIV.
"After seven [in the evening] you couldn't even say HIV then
because people were so afraid," she says. She explains that
the word to describe HIV or AIDS in the local Hausa
language, kanjamau, refers to a sickly, skeleton-like person
with scabby skin.
In 2005, after several months of losing weight and being
accused of possessing an evil spirit that was making her sick,
Yakubu said she became depressed and her relatives, some
Christians and others Muslims, did not offer her enough
support. "The Christians were saying I need deliverance and
the Muslims were saying I was a sinner," she said.
She finally visited a medical doctor who told her she was
HIV-positive. She said the news "completely threw her off
balance". She suspected her second, now former, husband had
given her the virus.
Via: Aljazeera
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