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Being HIV positive is not the end of life

Being HIV positive is not the end of life

Tuesday, August 13, 2013, 12:46 GMT+7

On the third floor of a 3-star hotel located in downtown HCMC, a young man and two co-workers were engrossed in vacuuming and washing carpets. Cleaning houses or buildings is now the daily work of ex-drug user Doan Van Thuong, who has been living with HIV for 10 years.

>> P 1: Vietnamese enterprises join hands to prevent HIV at work >> P2: Post-rehab people see bright future ahead >> P3: The happy HIV-positive machinist

Overcoming adversity

When we first met him at a café in District 5, Thuong immediately pulled his business card out and asked us to help him introduce his cleaning service. Thuong manages a 10-member team.

His small business has gained people’s trust thanks to its competitive prices and good service. Thuong even revealed that he is planning to collaborate with a businesswoman to establish a company aimed at providing customers with more professional services.

Since Thuong looks healthy and muscular, it’s hard to believe that he used to be drug addict for more than a decade. “I felt disheartened after I had a positive HIV test result. There was no escape from my life that time,” he recalled.

“After living with uncertainty for two years, I decided to do something helpful to make my parents happy during the last days of my life since I thought I was likely to die from HIV/AIDS soon. So I gave up drugs and found a job,” he continued.

After leaving a rehab center in late 2008, Thuong started working for a sanitation company. One day, he was told that the USAID HIV Workplace Project would offer small loans to those living with or affected by HIV. He decided to grab this chance to borrow VND10 million (US$500) from the project to open a grocery, but he failed to profit from his first business.

He wasn’t discouraged though, and he borrowed another VND20 million ($1,000) to buy cleaning machines and tools to work as a house cleaner, a job that he is familiar with. His life has stabilized since then.

He is happy with life as he was blessed with an HIV-negative baby early this year.

Getting through hard times

Truong Quang Hiep, another HIV-positive man, told Tuoi Tre that he did not believe someone would offer a poor man like him a loan of VND10 million. “That’s the biggest amount of money that I’ve received. My mom was extremely happy when I told her of this good news,” he said.

Hiep, now in his 50s, has obtained two loans worth VND25 million ($1,250) from the project, which he later used to buy a welding machine to fix his neighbor’s appliances and a Honda Wave to work as a motorbike taxi driver.

Hiep used to work for a ship building factory in District 2. He was sacked after the company discovered that he had other jobs without their permission. After that, he worked as a part-time construction worker – a hard and unstable job – to earn his livelihood.

He married to a woman when he was 41. But in 2002, when he was excited at the prospect of his first child, doctors at Tu Du Hospital in HCMC told him that he had HIV. “I was very fearful at first. After that, my health condition worsened and I could not physically do hard work anymore. I thought I was going to die,” he recalled.

However, his health has improved since he took ARVs provided free of charge by Binh Thanh medical center in HCMC.

Hiep said he is satisfied with his current life because he has a stable job and good income, and is no longer afraid of unemployment. He added that his current priority is to earn more money to support his 11-year-old son, who is HIV negative.

* The names of the two HIV-positive men mentioned in this article have been changed to protect confidentiality

Over 200 beneficiaries get loans

According to the final report of the USAID HIV Workplace-based project, more than 200 people living with or affected by HIV are now able to create self-employment opportunities thanks to loans provided by microfinance institutions, including the Vietnam Bank for Social Policies, Tinh Thuong One Member Limited Liability Microfinance Institution (TYM), and the M7 Network.

Pham Hoai Giang, director of the project, responded by email that the above microfinance institutions have provided clients with loans worth more than $100,000 in total, with monthly interest rates ranging from 0.65 to 0.8 percent, and the repayment rate is 98 percent.

Quynh Trung - Binh Minh

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