Lesotho Aids diary: Nurse

The BBC, in conjunction with Medecins Sans Frontieres, is following the lives of seven people from the community of St Rodrigue, in Lesotho, who will share their hopes and fears as they each struggle to live with and work through the country's HIV/Aids crisis.

Thakane Motete | Nurse | St Rodrigue

We recently had two patients who died on the same day.

One was a man who was on anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs).

He fell and was taken to the hospital and was diagnosed with a stroke.

The other one was a woman who had been taking ARVs for 3-4 months. She defaulted.

We poured all our effort into it, but we failed

We tried to trace her but she had got a job somewhere else.

So we wrote to the chief of her village to try to get a hold of her. But he was unable to find her as the lady had got married and moved away.

In this second marriage, she became pregnant. She had also lost her patient record, so she got a new one, and was tested at a health centre.

She was enrolled in a programme where she started a short course of ARVs to prevent transmission of HIV from mother to children but she didn't take them until her delivery.

'Aids clinic'

After giving birth to her baby somewhere else, she came back to our clinic and asked us to take her blood and do tests.

While waiting for the results to come back, we transferred her to the lay counsellors here for adherence counselling to prepare her for having to take ARVs.

However, she didn't come back on her due date for her check-up.

She was afraid to take the ARVs with the new husband probably because she had not disclosed her status to him.

This may or may not be related to her HIV. I'm not sure, as delivery complications are very common in Lesotho.

But it felt bad to hear she had died, because we poured all our effort into it, but we failed.

She also did her best, but she didn't have any support from her family.

And the bad thing is also that the brother of that lady passed away a few months earlier from the same disease because he didn't want to come to our clinic because our clinic is called the Aids clinic.

They say that every one comes out from our clinic HIV-positive.

We feel bad that we may not have done enough for the patient. We ask ourselves if we had done something more, maybe the patient would have lived.

When we asked her, she said that she stopped taking the ARVs because of the pregnancy but we think it is because she was afraid to take the ARVs with the new husband probably because she had not disclosed her status to him.

The baby is now with the grandmother. Thankfully, the PCR results (Polymerase Chain Reaction - a special method used to diagnose HIV in children under 18 months of age) were negative.

If you have any questions you would like to ask Thakane Motete, please use the form below.

The BBC may edit your comments and not all emails will be published. Your comments may be published on any BBC media worldwide.

E-mail this to a friend

Printable version