Tradition vs. Education

A man and his wife came to our clinic a few days ago to be tested for HIV at the VCT (voluntary counseling and testing) center. The woman had been feeling ill off and on and the two decided to come in to be tested, even though they had both tested negative a few months ago. The results are in and the woman starts crying as they are both faced with positive results. What happened in those past few months you might ask? The tribe in my village is Luo and they practice a cultural tradition called “wife inheritance.” Ultimately this means that if a woman is left a widow following the death of her husband she is inherited by one of her husband’s brothers. I can understand how this practice was beneficial since women are not allowed to own property and therefore it is essential to their survival to be absorbed into an existing family. Unfortunately if the death of her husband was because of HIV/AIDs, it is just shy of a death sentence for the family that inherits such a woman. In the case of my couple who tested positive for HIV, their polygamist family had inherited a 4^th wife recently following the death of the man’s brother. Furthermore, it gets even more complicated because one of the younger wives had just given birth and without the administration of prophylactic antiretroviral medication (the medication that prevents transmission of the HIV virus across the placenta and through breast milk) this baby is probably infected as well. Within a matter of months this virus practically destroyed an entire family because of tradition. Luckily we have a program at our clinic to dispense free antiretrovirals for this family to live a relatively normal, healthy life. But that’s the easy part; the family must first ALL get tested, accept the results, walk to the clinic diligently each month to get their medication, take their medication exactly as prescribed (which is often 2-5 drugs sometimes twice a day per person), eat a well-balanced diet, and rise above the stigma that goes along with the diagnosis. I can’t even imagine the strength it takes to do all of that especially when you are dealing with poverty where most often food and shelter come before medication and health. So if this family is forced to choose between harvesting their sugarcane and walking to the clinic… the sugar is going to win.