Faith’s story: Baby born with HIV

Faith’s story didn’t have to include her baby being born with HIV. But because of discrimination against Deaf people, it does. In Zambia, HIV/AIDS programs ignore Deaf people and others with disabilities. For example, they assume that people with disabilities don’t have sex. As a result, HIV/AIDS education programs decide they don’t need to provide sign interpreters. Therefore, Deaf women like Faith don’t learn how to protect themselves from HIV infection. Furthermore, clinics don’t test people with disabilities for HIV either. As a result, Faith didn’t know she had HIV until after her baby was born–too late to protect her baby.

Read Faith’s story and the situation of HIV/AIDS for people with disabilities in Zambia. The web page is partly accessible for people using screen reading software, but with difficulty. For example, many forms and web links are not labeled. Furthermore, images do not use alternative tags to describe them.

Also read a report about the situation of Deaf people and HIV/AIDS in Zambia. Meanwhile, Deaf women in Chile can learn about HIV from a video in Chilean Sign Language.

Photo credit Sully Pixel on Visualhunt com CC BY-SA