MZANSI men should know about HIV status.
That's the call from HIV/Aids activist Mlungisi Zondi.
Mlungisi (35), who is the chairman of the South African National Aids counsel and is part of the Coach Mpilo programme in Mamelodi West, said men are afraid of testing for HIV/Aids.
He said men should seek help from Coach Mpilo members in their areas who can assist them.
"With this Coach Mpilo programme, we do door-to-door campaigns and offer HIV testing and counselling.
"If a person is not comfortable with being tested by a coach or our counsellors, we give them an HIV self-test kit which he can use in his own time," Mlungisi said.
He said the person will be told how the kit test works.
"If the test results come with two lines, it shows that the person tested positive, and if he sees one line, the results are negative.
ALSO READ - Matric pupil Busi's screams of death!
"When the person tests positive, we always advise them to come to the clinic where another pre-test will be conducted," Mlungisi said.
He said that the majority of the people they gave the test kits to have started with their treatment.
"It's important for the people to start treatment immediately after they find out that they are positive.
"The HIV medicine can even make the viral load so low that a test can't detect it. This is called an undetectable viral load," Mlungisi said.
He said learning that you have HIV can feel like the end of the world.
Mlungisi said more than five inmates gang-raped him and that led him to contract HIV.
He was sentenced to life in prison when he was only 18, but his sentence was later reduced to 10 years in prison because it was his first offence, and the murder was not committed by him but by a fellow gang member.
He said being raped shattered him, and he wanted to commit suicide.
Mlungisi has written seven books, including My beautiful story living a blissful life with HIV.
"The book was published in 2022 and talks about my journey of living with HIV for 18 years. I believe that when I contracted the virus, I was stubborn and lived in denial because I was not proficient when it came to HIV/Aids-related matters.
"There were times I thought that suicide was a better option than to live in uncertainty. Not knowing how and when I will die became deep poisonous thoughts growing deep inside," he said.
He thanked his mother, Mpumelele Zondi, and his family for giving him support and making him realise that there's life beyond his HIV situation.
