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Being HIV-positive doesn't have to be a death sentence. Most HIV-positive people who receive antiretroviral (ARV) treatment are healthy and can lead fulfilling, positive lives.
MSF gave cameras to people living with HIV/AIDS in eight countries and asked them, with the help of their friends and relatives, to document their lives in photos and words. These are their stories. |
| Tereza, from Malawi, is eight months pregnant. She doesn’t know how she contracted the HIV virus. She says that ignorance creates fear, and she wants to show others that you can be HIV-positive and still enjoy life. |
 
Tereza |
| Every day at 8.30am a gentleman in a suit comes to MSF's Xiangfan clinic, in China. He greets every patient warmly and pays close attention to what they have to say. He is Wang, our peer educator. |
Wang |
| Victoria has been living with HIV for four years. When she started ARV treatment, the pills were too big for her to swallow. She has just finished primary school in Malawi and when she grows up, she wants to be a nurse. |
Victoria |
| Huang and Zhu contracted HIV when they sold their blood to repay a loan from their village trust in China. Their story is a testament to their love. |
Huang & Zhu |
| Zoila was told that her newborn son, Jose, would not live past his first birthday. Today, Jose is two years old and Zoila is training to be a counsellor for people living with HIV in Lima, Peru. |
Zoila |
| Brisco is 12 years old. He lives in a village in Malawi with his grandmother. His parents have died. Last year, Brisco did not go to school because he was very sick and had to stay in bed. |
Brisco |
| Charles was training to be a teacher in Nairobi, Kenya when he discovered that he had HIV. He lost his place at college because of his illness, but after two years of treatment he feels well and he knows that he can achieve whatever he wants. |
Charles |
| Ann is only 13 years old, but already she has suffered the loss of her baby brother and her father. Ann lives with her mother, who is also HIV-positive, in Thailand. |
Ann |
| Jean-Marie is Rwandan. For a long time, he did not dare tell his wife that he was HIV-positive. Many of his relatives were killed in the genocide of 1994, and Jean-Marie is trying to re-build his life and his family. |
Jean-Marie |
| Gloria and Luis met in a rehabilitation centre in Lima, Peru. She was a volunteer and he was being treated for drug addiction. They have a baby daughter called Camila. They have to wait more than a year to find out whether Camila has HIV. |
Gloria & Luis |
| Ton lives in Thailand. He has tuberculosis and HIV. He did not want to take antiretroviral medication for fear of the side-effects, but a dramatic course of treatment for an infection that caused blindness made him change his mind. |
Ton |
| Boniface lives in the Kibera slum of Nairobi, Kenya. He thought that HIV was a disease for rich people. When he found out that he had the virus, he thought his life was over. |
Boniface |
| Papa Jean and Mama Esther met in a support group for HIV-positive patients in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Although their families and friends objected, they decided to get married. They wanted to show that they could live a normal life. |
Jean & Esther |
| Patricia's husband died from an illness after the Rwandan genocide war. She believes that she contracted HIV from him, as he had had several wives. |
Patricia |
| Siama is Kenyan. She caught HIV from her ex-boyfriend. It was not until he died of Aids that she accepted that her illness was real, and that she had to seek treatment. |
Siama |
| Catherine lives in Kenya. Even after she was diagnosed as HIV-positive, her husband refused to use a condom during sex. He said that condoms were for prostitutes, and then he abandoned her and their two children. |
Catherine |
| Gilbert and Millicent live in Kenya with their six children, including a newborn baby. Baby Aaron does not drink his mother's breast milk, because of the risk that she will infect him with HIV. |
Millicent
& Gilbert |
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