Trudy Simpson, Staff Reporter
TASHA WILKINS* became a Christian in her early teens and it was no surprise that she eventually met her husband in church. But a life which should have been filled with promise and happiness was torn apart in 1998 when her husband, then a pastor, became ill. After several visits to hospital and various diagnostic tests he was eventually diagnosed with HIV. Tasha's life was never the same after that.
As *Tasha, a 31-year-old working in counselling and health education, talked with The Gleaner last week, she reflected on what might have been had she known her husband's health status much earlier. Her eight-year-old child, for one, may not have been HIV-positive. Perhaps, her child could have been one of the lucky babies saved from HIV-infection under the Health Ministry's mother-to-child transmission prevention programme.
Comfortable and in love, it never occurred to her that she was at risk.
"I would hear people talk against prostitutes and gays. I didn't think I could get it. I normally think it would affect people who run around (people with loose morals) and I was only with one person and it was my husband," she said. "I was saying that I didn't need to be tested. I trusted him. I went into that marriage with trust. When I found out, I was very upset. I realised that if I can be at home, be goody-goody and get it, it can happen to anyone."
MYTH BLASTED
In 2002, the Jamaica HIV/AIDS Epidemic Update blasted the myth that married women were safe from HIV. According to the report, more housewives (169) than prostitutes (159) reported developing AIDS. Data show that 8.4 per cent of all reported cases in women (3,386) were housewives.
"In the last 22 years of the epidemic in Jamaica, three per cent of the reported AIDS cases were from persons who listed their occupation as housewives. These women became at risk through their husbands who would be their only sexual partner," said Dr. Yitades Gebre, former executive director of the National HIV/AIDS/STI Control and Prevention Programme.
Married women are not the only ones at risk. New data show that infection among all women is growing at faster rates than men. They have a risk of getting the infection, which is two-and-a-half times that of men. The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) indicates that women and girls age 15 to 49 represent 17.6 million of the estimated 39.4 million people worldwide who were living with HIV in 2004.
Figures from the January to March 2005 Jamaica HIV/AIDS Epidemic Update show that the number of newly-reported AIDS cases in women in the age group 20 to 34 was 25 per cent higher than men in the same age group. In 2003, for every 1,000 pregnant women in Jamaica, 13 were found to be HIV-positive.
TRUST NO ONE
Behind the statistics are women like Tasha. She certainly wishes that she could have made different decisions. Tasha's husband died without telling her how he became infected. But she said she has learnt a valuable lesson about condom use and getting tested. She now teaches other women the importance of taking action to protect themselves whether married, committed, in love or in lust, the lesson is to "... Trust no one. No matter how perfect you think your relationship looks, there are always skeletons which are in the closet which, when they are out, you can't deal with them," Tasha advises.
* Name changed on request
