Growing up witnessing the devastating effects of HIV in her family and community in South Africa pushed Olwam Plaatjie to start using preventive HIV medications three years ago.
“Sometimes they’d lose weight, they would get sick and have to go to the clinic, and I didn’t want that for me,” she told The Associated Press. “I’d see the people I live with taking (antiretroviral) pills for HIV every day, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle that life.”
