Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2005. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
BBC News - December 17, 2005
Jane Elliott, BBC News website health reporter
When Elizabeth Chama Senkwe went public with her HIV diagnosis, she and her husband became front page news.
The headline in the Zambian Daily Mail read: "Negative man supports positive wife."
Neighbours and friends speculated how Elizabeth might have contracted the disease and falsely suggested she had been unfaithful to her husband, a prominent member of the country's Ministry of Agriculture.
Some started to shun her, avoiding her home or carefully washing items she had touched if she visited them.
Denial
Despite the terrible stigma, 35-year-old Elizabeth said she had no option but to talk about the disease.
She had lost five uncles and two aunts to Aids in just two years, yet no-one would admit how they died, instead blaming cancer, pneumonia or TB.
When Elizabeth was diagnosed five years ago, she wanted everyone to know that she was ill in a bid to teach others about the disease cutting a swathe through her country.
"I did think about what would happen to me when I told them, but I thought HIV is not the end of the road, it is just a virus in your body," she said.
"My husband said, 'Are you ready to be stigmatised?' but I wanted my relatives to go to the doctor and to tell people about what HIV is and how to avoid it.
"Not everybody uses condoms and half of my relatives could be infected - they have just not been tested."
Elizabeth has a relatively high level of CD4 cells - the cells that lead the body's fight against HIV - so does not need to take anti-retroviral drugs at the moment.
Exhibition
She is featured in a new photography exhibition and book about the disease, the culmination of two years' work by award-winning Spanish photographer Pep Bonet.
Commissioned by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), the book and POSITHIV+ photo exhibition focus on Aids treatment programmes in six African countries, showing how anti-retrovirals (ARVs) can transform lives of people living with Aids.
Mr Pep said the work was the result of seven trips to Africa studying the disease, during which he had been amazed by the positive impact of ARVs.
"I see my work as a challenge to show what can be done with anti-retrovirals and how we are letting people here die because we want to," he said.
"With the drugs they can lead their lives."
He said too little money was being spent on the vital drugs by global governments and pharmaceutical companies.
Riekje Elema, a former nurse and MSF worker, said the book and exhibition could help demystify the disease.
"In Africa they say everybody is going to die, but we want to show that people can be healthy and living their lives.
"People in Europe are diagnosed and get ARVs and are fine, they get their check-ups and they are fine, but in Africa the options are not there.
"We hope to show that it is possible in Africa in the most rural remote areas to give people ARV regimes and for them to take them."
The free exhibition is at the Honduras Street Gallery, London EC1Y OTH, until 22 December.
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