Former HIV and AIDS ambassador, Joyce Dzidzor Mensah was, today, left in a state of shock after HIV/AIDS test she undertook to prove that she has no HIV/AIDS came out positive for the virus.
Joyce Dzidzor apparently organized a press conference to publicly disprove perceptions that she and her children are HIV positive.
According to her, her two children have been stigmatized and dismissed from school as result of the notion that they are living with the virus just like her, their mother. She, therefore, invited the press to a conference to conduct a test on her and the children to prove that they are free from the virus in a bid to end the stigma against them.
But the tests conducted by two different health institutions indicated that Ms. Dzidzor is HIV positive. Joyce Dzidzor, who was reading the sealed results but had to hand them over to a media personnel for the sake of transparency, could not believe it when it was announced to the public that she tested positive for HIV.
Her two children, a boy and a girl, however, tested negative for the virus.
Joyce Dzidzor Mensah was contracted by the Ghana AIDS Commission as ambassador to embark on a campaign to curb stigmatization and discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS. She was contracted with the understanding that she is HIV/AIDS positive as the terms of the contract requires.
Her ambassadorial contract was, however, terminated in 2012 over breach of contract’s term.
She later announced publicly, in 2014, that she lied about her HIV/AIDS status and that she never tested positive for the virus.
However, in 2016, she made a shocking U-turn saying that she actually tested positive for the virus but had to lie about her status to protect her children from stigmatization.
Fast forward in 2019, Joyce Dzidzor claimed, in an interview, that she had tested negative for the virus after earlier testing positive and urged the public to resist from stigmatizing against her children.
But the stigmatization against her children seemed to have persisted forcing her to organize a press conference for rapid diagnostic tests to approve to the general public that she and the children do not have HIV/AIDS. She was, however, shocked to learn that she is HIV positive.
Watch video of the results announcement below.
