Success Stories

RR is an adolescent boy born in 2001, he lives with his mother and sister alone as his father separated from his mother when RR was still young. He has been tested HIV positive in 2004, and started ARVs in 2006.

RR did not adhere well to his medications, sometimes he missed daily pills, sometimes missed appointments, and sometimes he stopped taking meds. And it resulted to treatment failure as his VL showed it (44900copies of December 2019, 157 of February 2020, and 524 of April 2021).

He has participated in so many counseling sessions since 2019 in order to find out the causes of his bad adherence, and sometimes it was due to his daily life (his mother is sexworker, left them alone home, and was hard for them to find food which made him stop medications).

In January 2020, they have changed his regimen from ABC/3TC/ATVr to TDF/3TC/DTG in order to facilitate his adherence, and continued reinforced counseling with his mother. He has received nutritional assistance, attended 3 months vocational training in 2021, and since May 2021up to now, his VL is less than 20 copies. He has also participated in group therapy which helped him to express himself freely, and now We-Actx For Hope finds a temporary job which helps him to satisfy some of his primary needs.

GF is 23 years old young lady, orphan for both parents, graduated from high school three years ago and she grew up in Musanze district, Northern province. She is the last born in her family of 3 children, and she is HIV+ together with the first born, and now she works as a maid in Kigali. She was enrolled in 2006 and came in the clinic as transferred in from Musanze in February 2023 due to change of home for ARTs.

In May 2023, she came in psychosocial department as she has lost the voice, she could not hear, she was hopeless with depressed mood, suicidal ideation, low self-esteem, and self-stigma due to ‘’manifestation muco-cutanees.” “Mbona ndi mubi cyane, nararemewe kubabara, mbese mbona Imana ahari yaramvumye kuko n’ibyo ngerageje byose biranga”. GF reported during counseling session. And she also reported that when she is sad, she becomes upset and loose the voice due to her life story, she grew up mistreated by her uncle and she always asks herself why she has born with HIV whereas her old sister has no HIV (“Kubera iki ari njye wavukanye virusi itera SIDA kandi mukur wanjye ntayivukane nyamara we ari uwo hagati?” This means that she has issue with status integration too.

She has participated in weekly individual counseling in order to help her try find good in her life, to help her be optimistic, understand the reality of her past and to live her present. On day 4, she revealed that she has started to feel loved, and try to cope well with the stress she encounters. She has also participated in group therapy of youth with status integration issue which uses “blazon” technic where youth meet and share their life stories, express freely their feelings and emotions in order to help them heal from their wounds. Now she reports that she feels beautiful, relaxed, happy, rejuvenated, powerful, loved and she has hope to achieve many including having her own car through hard work, make savings and ARTs good adherence.