PEOPLE who saw him being wheeled to a local clinic in a wheelbarrow might have concluded that the frail-looking man would not live another day.
BY DALPHINE TAGWIREYI
Patrick Mukondo, who had been diagnosed HIV-positive, could not stand or walk without the aid of a stick or a helping hand.
But that was 12 years ago.
Today, the 50-year-old HIV and Aids activist is now fit and healthy enough to carry out any task that other men of his age can.
The change in fortunes was owing to the support of immediate family members and medication that he took religiously to keep his hopes of survival alive.
“When I tested positive in 2001, I was being carried in a wheelbarrow to seek health services. I thank God because my wife stood by me,” Mukondo told participants at a HIV and Aids workshop in Masvingo recently.
Mukondo said some relatives and friends even encouraged his wife to leave their matrimonial home because of his deteriorating condition. But she did not.
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“I love my wife very much because she stood by me through the darkest phase of my life and she did not give up, but rather supported me though she refused to get tested during that period,” said Mukondo.
His wife, Margret Mukondo (41), said they were united by true love and the vows they exchanged when they got married made her stick to her husband through his sickness.
“I was big boned and hence I continuously lived in denial,” said Margret.
She later realised that testing positive was not a death sentence, as her husband had survived and was leading a normal life.
Margret tested HIV-positive in 2011 and was given cotrimoxazole drugs, but she stopped taking them as her CD4 count was above 1 000 cells.
“However, when our last child started secondary school we decided to have another baby, so we informed our doctor on the idea and he advised us accordingly,” she said.
They were blessed with a child they named Nokutenda last year and she tested HIV negative after following the doctor’s advice to avoid Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT) of the disease.
Ministry of Health and Care PMTCT & Paediatric HIV Care & TB Treatment coordinator, Angela Mushavi said the success of HIV-positive couples giving birth to negative babies hinged on following instructions from health care workers.
“We encourage them to use condoms when engaging in sex but when they want to conceive, we advise the couple to engage in unprotected sex once during the female partner’s ovulation period and hopefully she gets pregnant,” she said.
