See all those languages up there? We translate Global Voices stories to make the world's citizen media available to everyone.

Learn more about Lingua Translation  »
All topics 

Young South African Woman Living With HIV Decides She's Not Hiding Anymore

Written byNdesanjo Macha

Translations

Read this post in Español, Ελληνικά, မြန်မာ, Swahili, 日本語, Malagasy
Posted 6 March 2017 15:41 GMT

22-year-old South African woman Saidy Brown, who revealed her HIV-positive status on Twitter. Image: Twitter

Internet users around the world are praising Saidy Brown, the 22-year-old woman in South Africa, who used Twitter last month to publicize that she is HIV positive.

Brown has lived her entire life with the virus, which claimed both her parents, but it was only in her early teenage years that she learned she had been born infected.

Last month, she decided to make her survival story public, tweeting:

According to Avert, a charitable organization that works to prevent the spread of HIV, South Africa is ground zero of the world's HIV epidemic. Two years ago, there were 380,000 new cases of HIV infection in the country, where the infected population had already reached 7 million people. As many as 180,000 people in South Africa were dying of AIDS-related diseases in 2015.

AIDS Foundation South Africa attributes the spread of HIV in South Africa to factors like poverty, inequality, social instability, widespread unsafe sex, the low status of women, sexual violence, migrant labor, limited and uneven access to quality medical care, and a history of poor leadership in response to the epidemic.

A study called “The People Living with HIV Stigma Index in South Africa,” completed by the Human Sciences Research Council, found that one in three people living with HIV experienced stigma from their communities — and women are stigmatized much more than men.

No wonder, then, that Brown's courage to be open about her status on social media has earned her many Twitter users’ praise. One Twitter user, “Wako Joel,” even suggested that she should be made Africa's ambassador for HIV/AIDS:

A recording Ugandan artist, Gitts Beats, said Brown's courage should be an example to others:

Sibusiso Msesiwe wrote:

Della Rovere thanked Brown for her bravery:

Mark Gamanya considered Brown to be a champion of those living with HIV by helping to change the public's perception about the disease:

The inspirational ripple effects from Brown's post have been felt around the world:

If you're having trouble imagining the stigma HIV patients face in South Africa, consider the following question put to Brown by an anonymous Twitter user:

And then have a look at her response:

Indeed, at least one Twitter user disputed the rationale of MMaenza1's question:

Michael Très from the U.S. made the following remarks:

Categories

Regions
Topics
Creative Commons License
Written byNdesanjo Macha

Support our work

Global Voices stands out as one of the earliest and strongest examples of how media committed to building community and defending human rights can positively influence how people experience events happening beyond their own communities and national borders.

Please consider making a donation to help us continue this work.

Donate now

Recent Sub-Saharan Africa Stories

More »

Top World Stories

Join the conversation

Authors, please log in »

Guidelines

  • All comments are reviewed by a moderator. Do not submit your comment more than once or it may be identified as spam.
  • Please treat others with respect. Comments containing hate speech, obscenity, and personal attacks will not be approved.

This site is licensed as Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. Please read our attribution policy to learn about freely redistributing our work Creative Commons License Some Rights Reserved