five years living with false aids

By Nthateng Mhlambiso (BTM Senior Reporter)

March 15, 2007: A South African woman residing in the Gauteng area was diagnosed to have HIV in 2001.

But this year, to her distraught, the woman tested HIV negative and strongly berated the heath systems in this country.

Sheila April* (37), a lesbians activist, fell victim of false-positive results of the virus, and she believes these health institutions’ irregularities expedite the spread of Aids.

After she and partner were raped in 2000 while walking back home from an event, April decided to go to the Esselen Street Clinic in Hillbrow for blood test, and her ELISA strategy test results came negative. But after three months of window period she went back and found that she was positive.

“I was traumatised but I believed the health experts, and (I) accepted my status. For five years, I suffered physically and emotionally – having to break the news to my children, and I lost my partners because of my status”, she yelled.

Having realised no moribund in her CD4 count, April went for three more HIV tests at different clinics and they all came back negative. “I then went back to 17 Esselen Street Clinic and took a rapid HIV test which also showed negative results”, she said.

After contending that she was positive, the nurse there confirmed that sometimes blood gets mixed up in the laboratories or gets wrong label.

“If a wrong label was put on my blood sample, surely the person who received the negative results of my blood believes that he or she is negative and probably could go on having unprotected sex because they believe that they are negative. This increases the spread of HIV and AIDS”, April articulated

Tests for HIV detect the presence of HIV antibodies in a person’s blood and not the HI Virus itself, and tests that are used in all likelihood are accurate, according to City of Johannesburg’s Communication Officer, Nkosinathi Nkabinde.

“When an HIV test is positive, a second test is always done to confirm the results. It is only after two tests that we can say that a person is HIV positive. Since the incident is reported to have happened in 2001, it is difficult to trace back now and ascertain exactly what happened,” he asserted.

While Nkabinde says that the clinic never came across such false-positive results before, Sibani Mngadi, spokesperson of the National Department of Health said that their department has encountered such cases.

“It depends on what type of test she did in 2001, rapid or Elisa. We have a policy that people should go back for confirmation of diagnosis. It becomes a problem if people do not do this and wait for such a long time”, Mngadi stressed.

He further explained that in such cases the department should consider things such as the reason the patient wanted the test, her suffering at that time and whether her antibodies were not baffled.

Speaking for the Medical Research Council (MRC), Roshni Govender emphasised on the importance of confirmation. “There is a relatively small number of false positives at present but it is always advisable that people go for confirmatory test.”

While the clinic kept April’s test with a promise to investigate the matter, on the contrary she has lost all trust. “Even though I have been diagnosed negative, I do not know if it is true, and will never be sure until I get the reason that initially caused false test results. I will never enjoy my sex life because I will never believe when a person tells me that they are negative, even if they have test results”, April concluded.

* Not her real name; source chose not to be named