HIV and TB ambassador tells how stigma made her suicidal

Thoko Nkomo says she nearly committed suicide due to stigma. (Supplied)

The stigma attached to HIV/Aids nearly drove Thoko Nkomo to committing suicide.

Nkomo has been living with HIV for 25 years, and is the HIV and TB ambassador in Mpumalanga. Speaking during the World Aids Day in Tjakastad where the international day was being commemorated, Nkomo said the stigma had also fallen onto her children and saw her name written on streets.

While living with HIV, she was first diagnosed with TB in 1999, and her immune system was compromised.

“One thing that made me lose hope was when my child also had to face the stigma, and I was using a wheelchair to move about. There was a time when I wished I could kill myself. During that period I found that my name was written on streets that I was dying of Aids. It was very hard for me and my family but the support from my family kept me going, and here I am now,” said Nkomo.

Nkomo said with the restrictions posed by the hard lockdown due to Covid-19, some patients had started defaulting on their antiretroviral medicine.

“Health institutions were not allowing many people and some people were scared to leave their homes to get their treatment. Some of them managed to come back and be re-enrolled and they are fine,” said Nkomo.

Mpumalanga premier Refilwe Mtshweni-Tsipane says the province is doing well in testing people living with HIV, but needs to follow up on patients. (Mandla Khoza)

Talking to the community, premier Refilwe Mtshweni-Tsipane said the province was doing well in testing and administering HIV treatment, however, there was more to be done about the tracing of those who had enrolled for TB treatment.

“In testing, we are doing well but in taking our people to treatment is a problem because we haven’t the reached 90% target, we are at 89%. We want to make sure that people who tests positive go straight to treatment and be monitored. Another problem we have, is children born with the sickness, where when they grow they question why they are taking the medication,” she said.

She said in some case these children ignored their medication and in such instances counsellors were called to counsel them.

She said they were also struggling to make follow-ups with TB patients for treatment.

“To mitigate this, we decided to use the workforce we used to trace contacts for Covid-19, to help us trace TB patients,” said Mtshweni-Tsipane.

The premier told Sowetan that she had instructed all her members of the executive council to be in the Nkangala region to encourage the public to vaccinate for Covid-19, as the region had seen an increase in infections.