Friends

A cornerstone of Tiyatien Health’s comprehensive community-based HIV/AIDS care is accompaniers. Accompaniers are community members who provide support to their assigned persons living with HIV / AIDS (or known as "PLWHA" or "friends").

This week, Gia and I were able to follow an Accompanier Leader, Agatha, while she visited with some of the accompaniers and their friends. As the sun set in Zwedru, we walked 45 minutes to Kudah Bye Pass, a neighborhood of Zwedru. We met two accompaniers who both said that they decided to become an accompanier to help those that are less fortunate than them. Every day, they walk short and long distances to visit their friends, provide their friends with emotional support, and to perform directly observed therapy for anti-retrovirals (ARVs). In a resource poor setting like Zwedru, it is amazing how strong the community is and how members seek to take care of each other. In the United States with 24 hour electricity, clean, running water, flushing toilets, and reliable transportation, the sense of community becomes lost as neighbors tend to become secluded in their own apartments, houses, and condos. So it is touching and amazing to see how the accompaniers here have volunteered to take care of those that would be so stigmatized due to their HIV/AIDS status.

It can also be heartbreaking when a friend decides to stop taking their ARVs as one of our friends did this week. Agatha and the accompanier sat and talked with the 16 year old girl to let her know the importance of taking these medications were -- not only to her, but to her 9 month old baby son. The friend still wouldn't take the medications as she said she was healthy and fine, but her accompanier convinced her to come to the HIV Equity Initiative (HEI) Clinic the next day for further follow-up. She did arrive the next day with her accompanier, and we again went over the importance of taking ARVs and adherence. She left with her little son, agreeing to restart her medications.

I question whether she will start her medications as she promised. Without an accompanier, I'm certain that she would be lost; however, since she has a dedicated, devoted accompanier, I'm certain that he will continue to talk with her, educate her, and work with her.