Instagram model documenting her health journey following 2022 AIDS diagnosis announces major update: 'I'm a survivor'
A 28-year-old Instagram model gave her followers a major health update after being diagnosed with AIDS in March 2022. After documenting the highs and lows of the last year, Gena Tew said on June 24 that she’d finally crossed an important threshold.
“Those of you who have been following my journey, today is the fricking day y’all,” the Tennessee-based influencer said. “I have been waiting for my CD4 to get over 200 for the longest. Y’all, not only is it over 200, it is 308.”
CD4 cell count measures the immunity function in patients living with HIV. The levels can help doctors determine the effectiveness of treatments.
“That means that I am no longer being seen as [having] AIDS,” Tew said. “I am being seen as [having] HIV … I got to the point to where I’m undetectable, untransmittable and I can live my life just like everybody else.”
When Tew publicly announced her AIDS diagnosis, she claimed a doctor had told her she had been living with it for eight to 10 years already. She did not know who gave her the virus.
Over the last year, Tew has been documenting the effects of the virus, including losing her vision, dealing with muscle atrophy and, at one point, weighing around 65 pounds. In March 2023, Tew celebrated gaining weight back and was able to briefly stand up without a walker.
Two months later, Tew announced she was dating someone. Her current undetectable HIV status means her partner can take precautions, such as wearing a condom or taking pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), that reduce the chances of him contracting HIV. Also, thanks to antiretroviral therapy, HIV and AIDS patients can also block transmission to others.
“I can have a normal life. Let’s get rid of that stigma,” Tew continued. “AIDS isn’t a death sentence. I survived, I’m a survivor.”
According to data from the 2018 Medical Monitoring Project (MMP), women with HIV experience more stigma compared to men with HIV. The southern United States, where Tew is from, is “disproportionately affected by HIV” and HIV stigma because of a number of factors including poverty rates, a history of discriminatory laws and practices and a lack of high-quality sex education.
While men are the largest group of people diagnosed with HIV, Black women make up the majority of new cases among women in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (Transgender women are not included in this category.) In 2018, the CDC reported that one in nine women is unaware they have the virus which, left untreated for years, can turn into AIDS.
“We are, by and large, invisible and stigmatized in ways that we don’t even, we can’t, articulate,” Jasmine Ward, the founder of Black Ladies in Public Health, told USA Today. “That’s how stigmatizing HIV can be.”
Another major stigma that only women face and that Tew addressed in one of her videos is that women diagnosed with HIV can’t have children. One of the side effects of the dramatic weight loss Tew underwent was she stopped having her period, which affects her ability to get pregnant.
“A lot of you have been asking me can I still have kids,” Tew said in her video. “I haven’t had a period for over a year, and I was actually worried about that myself. But my body is getting better.”
But another aspect of the stigma is that women could potentially pass the HIV virus to their baby.
Dr. Laura Guay, vice president of research at the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, told Newsweek that it is possible for women living with HIV to give birth to an HIV-free baby.
“The most important thing that she can do is to work with an HIV health care provider as early as possible (ideally before getting pregnant) to minimize her risk of passing on the infection to her baby,” Guay said.
Connie Mudenda, an activist based in Zambia who is HIV positive and has an HIV-free daughter, told the (RED) organization that “thanks to educational resources, life-saving HIV medicine and other preventative measures, couples with one partner who is HIV+ and one who is HIV free are able to lead normal, happy, healthy lives. And any HIV+ mother on medication can have a happy, healthy HIV- family.”
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