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Brave victim born HIV positive learnt to live with condition, stigma

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2020 00:00 | By
Doreen Moracha.

Doreen Moracha was eight years old when she found out that she was born HIV positive.

She had to learn how to live with it and about the challenges it brings to everyday life.

In an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation TV, Moracha now 27 shared her journey living positively with HIV, sharing her status publicly and the work she is doing locally and internationally to make sure that young people have proper information about the scourge that is apparently causing havoc among her age mates.

She also shares about the superstition and the stigma that she faced and how she is using her journey to create awareness among members of the public.

According to the documentary dubbed “dating is hard, dating with HIV is even harder,” Doreen was just 13 years when she learnt that she was HIV positive. 

To make matters worse, this was despite the fact that her parents had all along been aware of her status five years earlier, but did not tell her.

“My parents knew about my status when I was eight years, but they informed me about it when I was 13 years,” she told BBC.

Doreen regrets that people across the world have given HIV, which she calls, a tiny virus, too much power.

“Most people associate HIV with death, which in essences causes too much stigma.

As a lady when you have HIV, most people think they are doing you a great favour dating you.

But we must rise above this stigma and realise that people with HIV have lives. They were born to live fully,” she says.

She now wants HIV to be normalised, by people talking about boldly and in public.

Doreen says she was born with the virus to an HIV discordant couple whereby she was the only child among her siblings to have been diagnosed with HIV/AIDs.

And owing to the stigma that surrounds HIV and the horror of getting rejected by peers, she was asked to remain silent about her condition through her teenage years.

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