Key points
Xolisile and her children are on the road to good health. Thanks to a CDC-supported program, nurses at her local clinic discovered she and her children had contracted both HIV and TB and provided them with lifesaving medicines to treat both diseases.
A Family's Story
Photo credit: Thom Pierce 2018
A wound on her 11-year old daughter's leg concerned Xolisile enough to take the hours-long walk from her home high in the rural hills of Vulindlela to the nearest health clinic. There she discovered her little girl, Gugulethu*, was HIV-positive. She was started immediately on treatment. "Today, she is alive," says Xolisile, "she is healthy and she is alive, because of them."
The same clinicians who treated Gugulethu at the CDC-funded facility in the Umgungundlovu district also encouraged the mother of two to bring her family members for testing as part of an innovative effort to find hidden cases of HIV.
Soon Xolisile learned that she, her husband, and her son had HIV. She and her son had also contracted TB.
*not her actual name.