COUNSELLING ON HIV/AIDS

How long will I live?

You will live for 10-12 years if you live by Positive Living. You can go on for 20 years or more with ARV drugs. You have to be careful with ARV treatment and follow the instructions of the doctor.

You have to live in peace with your family. Eat nutritious fruit, nuts, grains and vegetables. Drink plenty of clean water. Do not booze or smoke. Modern research shows that HIV-infected people die quickly if they smoke.

Can my daughter give HIV to my family?

In normal living in the family, she can not give the virus to family members except during sex with her husband. They both need to use a condom. The virus is transmitted by mixing of body fluids. This will not happen in normal family living.

Your daughter can hug and kiss family members, use the same toilet and cooking utensils. It would be good to allow her to cook for the family. Your family has to let her go back to normal as soon as possible.

Encourage her to go out with her friends. She can still play netball. In the afternoons, she can play volley ball with the young people in the settlement.

Can she cook food for the family?

Of course she can. She can not pass the virus while cooking food. It would be unusual for a woman to cut her finger with a knife and allow blood to drop. Most food is cooked at high temperature.

She has to feel that life is going on as before. If she cooked for the family before, let her still do that. She must not be rejected and kicked out of the house. If she has a job in town or works in the garden, the family still has someone who can bring money into the house.

How can my family help her?

Your family can help her by loving her. We all die and still have to go on with life. Who knows but other family members may die before your daughter does. They may be in a car accident or killed in a fight. Let us all live in love while we are alive.

Do not shame or blame your daughter. She has a baby to look after. Help her do that. Both of them are members of your family. When she is on ARV drugs, help her to get new supplies. She must not run out of drugs or she will die.

Keep her HIV status secret in the family. Other people do not have to know. Take care that family members who are married to your sons and daughters do not spread the news to their families.

Can she live long on ARV drugs?

She can live for a long time on ARV drugs. She has to be careful and talk to the doctor if the drugs give problems. Drugs can have side effects. Some drugs make the person tired and sick all the time. The person should go back to the doctor.

Drugs should be taken every day at the same time. The person should make a routine of taking the drugs every night after the evening meal or in the morning after breakfast. If the drugs are stopped even for a day, the person may be ill and can die as the virus becomes immune to the drugs.

In Papua New Guinea, the first line of drugs is free. If immune to the drugs, then the person will have to go on to the next line of drugs. These are not free. Most people in PNG can not afford to buy their own drugs. So they have to treat the free ARV drugs with respect.

Problems come in this country if the person lives in a rural area and has difficulty traveling to the city to obtain a new supply of drugs. Problems will come if there is delay through rain, blocked roads, tribal fights or lack of money to pay for the PMV.

A few years ago, there was an experiment conducted in Australia to find out how people with HIV responded to stopping ARV drugs. They would take the drugs for a month and then stop for a month. The experiment was stopped when most of the people died.

How can my daughter keep strong?

She will keep strong if she is happy and at peace within the family. Her stress levels are down. She eats nutritious food and drinks plenty of clean water. She eats much fresh and ripe fruit, nuts, grains and vegetables from the market.

She keeps herself clean every day with soap and water. She exercises every day in going to work, walking up and down mountains and carrying bags from the gardens.

She does not smoke cigarettes with tobacco of marijuana and does not drink beer or homebrew. Help her to have fellowship with friends by involving her with church or other activities.

Why is my son violent and having bad dreams?

If your son has been infected with the virus for a number of years and not on ARV, the time will come when he suffers brain damage. This will come if he has not been drinking plenty of clean water. He is no longer taking good food, salts and water into his body. His brain is being affected.

He may start having bad dreams and being afraid that people are going to hurt him. He may see people who are not there. This is called dementia.

As time goes by, he will start to lose his memory. He may turn the tap on and forget to turn it off. He may cook food and forget. The family must support him.

He may go out in final stages and forget how to come home. The family must take care he is not lost. He may go to town and have sex with other people.

Will my baby be HIV positive?

An HIV infected mother can pass the virus on to her baby in the womb or at the breast. The baby can be infected at birth as the blood of the mother mixes with the blood of the baby as it passes down the birth canal.

It is important that the pregnant mother goes for an AIDS test before giving birth. If HIV positive, she should be given ARV drugs to reduce the viral load in the blood to zero from the 28^th week. Check on the week with the doctor.

Then there will be no virus in the blood to infect the baby. The virus can pass from the mother’s blood to the breast milk and the baby can be infected. Recent advice from the Papua New Guinea Department of Health is that a breast fed baby should also take ARV drugs while the HIV-infected mother breast feeds.

It is important that the mother does not smoke during breast feeding. The milk will be infected with HIV and the chemicals from the cigarettes. These will pass to the baby. Cigarette chemicals will cause infection of the throat and chest of the baby. This will enable transmission of the virus to the baby.

HIV mothers can give the virus to the baby through breast milk, particularly if not on ARV. At times, other young children may ask the mother for breast milk Mama mi laikim susu. But the small child may have colds, chest infections and infections from cutting or losing teeth. This may allow entry of the virus from a mother not on ARV.

With ARV treatment for baby and mother, the baby should be born and pass through the breast feeding without infection with HIV.

My son is gay. How can I help him?

Gay men suffer most in the AIDS pandemic. Their lifestyle opens the door to a wide range of infections. Anal sex can give them anal cancer more than any other group in the community. Gay men should regularly visit the doctor who can locate the lesions in the anal wall that lead to anal cancer.

Gay men are involved in anal sex and face the danger of infection through the eggs of coccidian gut parasites that may enter their mouths from faeces and lay eggs in the intestinal wall, destroying the capacity of the gut to absorb nutrients and water.

Oral sex can transmit HIV through the lymph nodes and tonsils of the mouth. All people who engage in oral sex may be infected in this way. There is a false belief that HIV infection can not take place through the mouth. He is still your son. Love and protect him. Let him see that family is important.

What errors can churches make?

Many reports have come across the nation of clergy giving faith healing to people living with HIV/AIDS. They tell the person that they are healed and to go forth into the world again.

These people may go forth and some will think they can return to their old life style of promiscuous sex, rubbish food, tobacco and marijuana smoking with beer and home brew drinking. But they are not cured and still suffer from the HIV virus. Then they die.

Other reports show that some clergy are advising the congregation not to live with ARV drugs but by the healing grace of God.

One church in Port Moresby has been known to have the pastor speak out to all those in the congregation who were HIV positive. He would tell them they were cured.

This is foolish behaviour that can only make people angry when they are not cured. If on ARV drugs and people cease as the result of the advice of the pastor, they can die with a new outburst of the virus.

Faith can be important in the lives of all people. Positive Living can certainly help the HIV sufferer to live long without ARV drugs. But to advise people to go off their ARV drug treatment and trust in God is leading these people to certain death.

From Scripture we read that Jesus healed by faith. So too a number of disciples were able to heal. But that does not mean that the clergy of the world have the capacity to lay on hands and heal the sick.

Several years ago, there was a young woman living with HIV/AIDS and staying at 3 Angels Care Centre. One weekend she went home and attended church with her family.

After the church service, the pastor met with the family and spoke to the young woman. She was obviously in final AIDS. She was thin with no muscle on her bones and her hair had been falling out. Her fingernails were cracking. Her body was depleted of protein.

The pastor laid his hands on her head and told her that she was cured in the name of Jesus. She did not return to the centre for a number of weeks. Then she came with a cigarette in her mouth to announce she was cured. She died two weeks later.

Why am I on ARV and always tired?

This can be the side effect of the ARV drug. In cells of the body are small compartments that take in the nutrients, oxygen and water to produce a chemical reaction that powers the cells and tissues. These are called the mitochondria.

It promotes a reaction called the Krebs Cycle and produces the ultimate body chemical called adenosine tri-phosphate. But there are ARV drugs that can block the mitochondria and prevent the chemical reaction. The main drug is the non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors.

If ARV drugs and the person feels tired all the time, it is important to go to the doctor who prescribed the drugs and ask advice on changing the dosage of drugs.

What happens if I stop taking ARV drugs?

We have to understand that the ARV drugs kill the virus in the bloodstream. This means that the attack on the gut lining slows down and stops. If the ARV treatment starts early, the gut lining will not be completely destroyed and will start to mend as there is no HIV in the blood to destroy the CD4 cells in the gut lining.

But there is still HIV in the hiding places or reservoirs. These are the organs of the lymph system that include the thymus, spleen, lymph nodes and marrow of the long bones. The red and white cells are made in the marrow. T-cells are made in the thymus.

So when the person stops taking the ARV, the virus will burst out of the hiding places or reservoirs. The HIV will flood the blood stream again. There will be a new attack on the gut lining.

There will be a massive drop in health as the absorption of nutrients, salts and water ceases again. The water-salt balance will be changed again. As well, the bacterial waste from the gut will flood back into the blood and into the brain. Type leaky gut HIV brain into Google. The person may quickly die.

Do you understand problems with ARV supplies?

You live in the highlands three days walk from the road. You must plan your life so that you always get your ARV supplies before you run out of drugs. Your family needs to help you.

Do not wait until you have two days supply and then go off down the highway to get new supplies at the hospital. There may be problems with the road cut by floods, bridges washed away and road blocks set up by villagers. There may be tribal fights in your village or on the way down the highway.

So make sure that you have supplies for many days before you go for new supplies. If the rainy season has come, make sure that you talk to the doctor of being given extra supplies. If you have no drugs for a few days, you may die.

What can a raped woman do?

A woman who have been raped by a man or gang raped runs the risk serious risk of being infected with HIV if the attacker is HIV positive.

We have to understand that the virus enters the body through the genitals and passes to the lymph system. It passes around the blood for a day or two before beginning to enter the CD4 cells.

The woman can have ARV treatment that kills the virus in the blood stream and lymph system. The drugs have to be taken within 12 hours after the rape and continued for a month.

The virus will be killed before it enters the hiding places or reservoirs. The same applies to a nurse or doctor who has been stuck with the needle of a used syringe.

How does my body change?

There are changes that take place as the virus destroys the body systems. The first change is the fever that can occur within 3 weeks of infection.

It may be caused by the virus breaking down the gut lining or the bacterial waste translocating into the blood. Or it may be the time that the first wave of HIV comes out of the CD4 cells on replication.

Over the first years there are few indications that the person has HIV infection. There will be lumps in the groin as the virus enters the lymph nodes. This too can start early after infection.

The destruction of the gut lining brings problems as the body is unable to absorb nutrients, water and salts. As the gut lining is slowly destroyed by the HIV entering the CD4 cells in the gut wall, there is a slowing down in production of protein and glucose. This can be stopped with successful treatment with ARV drugs. But many PNG people still have no access dues to distance from a medical centre.

For people not on ARV, there are no stores of protein in the body except the protein in the muscle. Slowly the muscle protein is removed to be used elsewhere in the body. The person become skeleton-like. There is no future for any creature that eats itself.

As well, the depletion of the protein affects the replacement of protein in all body cells. We notice this more when the hair starts to fall out.

Women will find that large handfuls break off as they brush their hair. In final stages, their hair looks like that of an old woman of 90 years. As well, their finger and toe nails may start to crack at the half moon.

With the break down of the gut lining, the nutrients and water will not be absorbed. These will pass out of the body as diarrhoea or pekpek water.

There may be a slow onset of dementia that is the breakdown of the brain. It starts with the change in water-salt balance, breakdown in absorption of oxygen, nutrients, salts and water.

The person may suffer depression, anger, delirium, delusions, hallucinations and paranoia. They may dream and believe that people are trying to kill them.