Personal Testimonies
Joyce Kamwana
is a Malawian HIV/AIDS treatment activist.
My name is Joyce Kamwana and I was 25 years old when I first found out I was HIV-positive. Today, I am 48 years old and have lived to see my daughters grow up and have also become a grandmother, thanks to the free treatment I have received through the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. A few years before my husband, my baby daughter, and I were diagnosed in 1988, my husband had developed shingles and a boil, and my daughter often had various skin wounds, but we were not sure why. Three years after we tested positive for HIV, in 1991, my husband passed away and I was left to care for both my daughters single-handedly, having to act as a father and mother in one.
Personal Testimonies
Banza Chela
is a Zambian HIV/AIDS mentor.
My name is Banza Chela and I'm a married Zambian gentleman. My life has changed tremendously in so many ways. I never knew or thought that I could be infected with HIV. In 2005, I began experiencing chest pains and suspected I had tuberculosis. After visiting three clinics in Lusaka, none of them were able to detect my extrapulmonary TB. It was not until I met with a team of doctors in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, who were my elder brother's workmates, that I was diagnosed as TB- and HIV-positive.
Personal Testimonies
Princess Kasune Zulu
is a speaker, author, and AIDS activist.
In 1997, I tested HIV-positive and was given only six months to live. Today, however, I travel the world speaking about HIV/AIDS and raising awareness about human rights issues, gender equality, education for girls, and about child labor, soldiers, and prostitution. Though I was born to a relatively well-off family in Zambia and lived a privileged childhood by my country’s standards, my family struggled when my mother and father became sick with a mystery illness when I was only ten years old. Our lives changed dramatically when we moved to a village where I was forced to walk for miles before school each morning just to provide us with dirty drinking water. I wanted desperately to save my parents and even had to carry my father on my back just to get him to a hospital. Both my parents died within months of each other, leaving me in charge of eight siblings when I was 18.
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