social context of disclosing hiv test results: hiv testing in tanzania

Researcher: Where did you take your HIV test?
Respondent: I went to the Iringa Regional Hospital.
Researcher: What made you take an HIV test?
Respondent: I often suffered from high fever, and last October I was
admitted at the hospital and got treatment for malaria…
after being discharged, I still noted that I was tired all the
time. I went back to the hospital and the doctor noted that I
was coughing.
Researcher: What did the doctor tell you?
Respondent: He advised me to take an HIV test.
Researcher: So the doctor is the one who advised you to get tested?
Respondent: Yes, the doctor advised me to get tested after he saw that I
had tuberculosis.
Another respondent narrated her poor health as a motivating factor for seeking an
HIV test in the following way:
Case 3
Researcher: What made you take an HIV test?
Respondent: The idea of testing my health was not from somebody else
but I decided on my own because my husband died from a
mysterious disease. He first suffered from tuberculosis,
then became very weak and finally died… I went on with
my normal life although something at the back of my mind
kept on telling me that it might be AIDS that killed my
husband. After waiting for a long time, I too started feeling
bad and suffered from high fever. Sometimes I had malaria
and in other times severe diarrhoea. I then decided that it
was important for me to test my health.
Researcher: Whom did you decide to tell that you are going to get
tested, because you told me that your husband died?
Respondent: I told my friend—a girl friend whose husband also died. We
usually like discussing things among ourselves because the
circumstances under which our husbands died were the
same. After advising each other we decided to take an HIV
test. My friend went first and tested positive. I then decided
to test, too, and the results were positive.
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