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

She, however, went to get tested as a result of her poor health, and her husband
was also very sick. Yet she was shocked by the results. When she was asked what the
society says about HIV/AIDS, she answered:
Let us be careful, we should not be involved in unprotected sex, AIDS is
bad.
Most of the respondents who indicated that they were not shocked after learning
that their results were positive tended to be those ones who, even before testing, for
various reasons, had already suspected that the chances were higher for their results to be
positive. Below are some of the reasons showing why they felt this way. For example, a
38-year-old married woman whose spouse was promiscuous had this to say:
When my health started changing and I started feeling bad, I began to
think that it must be AIDS… I had that feeling, and therefore I came here
to get tested just to confirm it.
A 30-year-old single woman who had been well had this to say when her results
were communicated to her:
I felt peaceful because I had already been prepared for that.
Another female respondent narrated the following circumstances as being behind
her decision to take an HIV test:
I made up my mind to take an HIV test because my husband had died
under circumstances that were suspicious. He had first suffered from TB,
and after that he became very thin and died. I went on living, in good
health, but there was always the feeling in my mind that there could be
trouble of some kind. Eventually I decided to go for an HIV test.
These accounts indicate that testing for them was motivated by a specific situation
that the respondents were experiencing. The circumstances within their own household or
relationships made them anxious about their own serostatus and afraid that they may have
contracted HIV. In this case the decision to be tested was a means to confirm their HIV
status whether it was negative or positive. Such circumstances can be summarized as
individuals who fear they may have contracted the HIV virus from their spouse or sexual
partner because that person showed signs of HIV infection.
The study also interviewed counsellors and individuals working in MOHSW who
had a wider perspective on how and why people come for HIV tests. Most of the
counsellors and health care providers that we talked to in both Dar es Salaam and Iringa
and also people from the MOHSW believed that many come for HIV testing in the hope
of getting medical treatment for HIV. One official from the MOHSW had this to say:
Since the advent of ARVs, the number of people who volunteer to take an
HIV test has increased tremendously. There is no doubt that ARVs have
brought a sense of hope for future life. When ARVs were not there, most
38