HIV-positive amputee turns a minus into a plus

Born in Mabele village, the 41-year-old peer educator at the Infectious Disease Care Centre (IDCC) in Kasane revealed that he had to make the difficult decision of getting amputated after being diagnosed with a cancer, kaposi sarcoma. 

"I was in a lot of pain, my legs had sores and were dry. I reached a stage where I did not know whether to lift them up or let them down and felt the only way to survive would be to lose both of them," he said. Sibanda first tested for HIV in 1999 and the results were positive. Before that he had been an active photographer. "I had not even gone to the hospital to test, I had a worrying pimple on my face that would not go away," he said. Sibanda said that the pimple was found to be cancerous and he was told that majority of the people with such a cancer were likely to have HIV. He said it was like a heavy burden had been lifted from him when he finally tested and the results came positive.