Esther – Glad to be alive

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Esther

Ghana

32 years

Mom and Seamstress

Husband and 2 children

Began antiretroviral therapy in May 2007

“The medicine is very effective and helps me live longer.”

Esther lives in Agomenya in Ghana, about 90 minutes drive from the country’s capital Accra. The countryside is lush and tropical, bananas and other crops such as cocoa thrive around here. But so does AIDS, this region of Ghana has the country’s highest HIV prevalence rate at nearly 9 %.

Esther learned she was HIV positive in 2004. But the virus didn’t progress to the point where she needed antiretroviral medication until early in 2007. Now, like all people living with HIV, Esther needs to take her antiretroviral pills every day for the rest of her life. They keep her healthy and help prevent the HIV virus from evolving in to AIDS.

It’s something this beautiful and now healthy young mother of two children is very mindful of. Esther wants people to know her antiretroviral (ARV) medicine, which (RED) money helps finance in Ghana, is very effective and helps her live longer. She knows that without her ARV’s she would not be around to raise her two young children, Ruth and Ruben. Nor would she be able to help support her family as she now does, sewing clothing for local people in her community.