Josephine Chilebela

After she was diagnosed with HIV in 2012, Josephine Chilebela learned quickly how to live with the disease.

The mother of three started treatment right away and quickly brought her infection under control. Over the past few years she has only needed to visit the clinic near her home in Zambia’s capital, Lusaka, a couple of times a year to get some blood tests done and to pick up her six-month refills of anti-retroviral medicine. Aside from those appointments, she only ever really thought about her status in the few seconds it took her to swallow her pill each morning.   

It was the cervical cancer diagnosis two years ago that upended her life. Weakened by chemotherapy, she has been unable to work since shortly after the treatment started. She now spends most of her day in bed, awake, but lying still in a darkened room.

Following her diagnosis, she came to rely on a small stipend of about $45 a month that she received from a local HIV support group. It was enough to buy food. Without something to eat, she would not have been able to keep down the HIV drugs. It was one less worry in the tumult of trying to feed her children and find the money to get to the hospital for the tests that tell her whether her cancer has spread.

That’s exactly why the support group funding was there. It was a recognition that people living with HIV are going to encounter struggles, particularly in impoverished communities like Chilebela’s. If there was truly a commitment to keeping people on treatment, then some safety nets had to be put in place.

The support group funding, provided through a U.S. grant, was cut by the Trump administration early last year.

Now Chilebela only survives through the help of some neighbors and the 12 other family members who share her small, three-room house. None of them can find full-time work, but they are able to scrape together enough money through small jobs to keep her fed.

They are anxious enough about whether she will survive the cervical cancer. Her sister, Fridah, says she does not want to consider what will happen if Chilebela goes hungry and can no longer stomach the HIV treatment.

She has never missed the appointment of drugs. She was taking well. It’s just this interruption.