Keeping a secret is most probably the hardest thing in life, especially if it touches on a member of your family.
Despite it being term as 'the best thing for you' it is usually not the case as it brings a lot of hatred and anger which could have been averted had the secret been let out of the bag early enough.
For instance, how can a mother disclose to her child about his/her HIV status? How does she start the conversation?
Imagine living a secret life for 17 years. No one bothers to tell you what is happening. That was 19 year old Joyce Amondi Auma's life. For seventeen years, she did not know that she was HIV positive and neither was she on any medication.
On second August, 2014, Joyce was diagnosed with Herpes Zoster (shingles) and was hospitalized for a period of two weeks.
Shingles is an infection caused by the varicella-zoster virus, which is the same virus that causes chickenpox.
This type of viral infection is characterized by a red skin rash that usually causes pain and burning. Shingles usually appears as a stripe of blisters on one side of the body, typically on the torso, neck, or face.
" I was very weak and had lost a lot of weight. My doctors insisted that I take a HIV test to rule out their suspicions and sadly the test came back positive." Joyce tells me while shaking her head in disbelief, two years later.
"My doctor thought that I knew about my status but I didn't. He asked me if I was in any medication and I said no. When I called my brother and sister, they told me that they knew about my status but they were not in a position to tell me." Joyce says.
"After talking to my brother, I called my mother. She first apologized for not telling me the truth and later told me that she did not think that the virus would catch up with me." Joyce reminisces.
At this point she tells of how she had a low self esteem in school. To make matters worse, she was being treated differently, by her friends after her status was leaked to the school without her consent.
"I became the black sheep. They didn't want us to be friends anymore." Joyce said.
"I also remember how they labeled me promiscuous simply because I was HIV positive. Yet I was a virgin." She added.
Worrying statistics from the National Aids Control Council shows that 61% of Kenyans think that HIV is a punishment for bad behavior while 55% believe that HIV is spread by sex workers.
The National Stigma and Discrimination Index also shows that 52 per cent of Kenyans would not buy food in the market from a known person living with HIV, 50 per cent consider HIV infection a punishment from God.
Another 48% feared their children could get HIV if they played with children who were HIV positive. 45 per cent of the same respondents noted that men who have sex with men and injecting drug users deserve to acquire HIV.
The study was conducted in 2014. It was aimed at generating strategic information on HIV related stigma and discrimination across the country to guide interventions and policies to address HIV related stigma and discrimination to enhance the quality of life among people with HIV.
But what is the appropriate age for a parent or a guardian to disclose to his or her child about their HIV status?
When they are not under the care of their parents or guardians, they are usually with their peers who tend to give wrong information about HIV.
Some parents also forget that the older their children grow they tend to learn more things from their peers.
According to Nelson Otuoma, chairman of the National Empowerment Network of People Living with HIV and Aids, NEPHAK, the appropriate age for a parent to open up to a child about their HIV status is between five and seven years.
"Let us not think that it easy for someone who has HIV to tell their child. Those people need support and education. Disclosure is not an event it is a process." Otuoma said.
"There is no script of disclosing one's status. NEPHAK and the National Aids Control Council (NACC) cannot come up with a policy or guidelines on disclosure." Otuoma said.
He also recommended that the latest age for disclosure to be nine years.
"HIV is a very difficult issue to discuss. But parents need to know that however difficult it is, children will be happy to know about their HIV status from them. The most annoying thing for them is that they get to learn about their HIV status from their peers." Otouma said.
Otuoma also noted that parents should stop being scared of telling their children the truth because keeping it a secret will only make the relationship between the parent and the child worse.
"Start talking to your child at an early. This is how you create a relationship with them. By the time you start disclosing to them about their status they already know how what HIV is and that you can live longer with help of medicines." Otuoma said.
"If you delay until when they are going to high school it will not help. At this stage they know so many bad things about HIV and they will stop taking medications. If they take such a move, they develop opportunistic infections and later die." Otuoma added.
John Ohaga, Director of Communication at the National Aids Control Council says that says that even though the stigma levels in the country currently stands at 45 per cent, much more needs to be done to ensure that there is zero discrimination in the country.
"People living with HIV face a lot face a lot challenges in their day to day lives which should not be the case. They do not need to be treated differently." Ohaga said.
Ohaga added that no one should be compelled to disclose their HIV status neither should a third party disclose someone else's status without their consent as stipulated in the HIV and AIDS Prevention and Control Act.
"People need to know that what they are doing is wrong because when they are disclosing someone else's status they are violating their own rights as it is supposed to be voluntary." Ohaga said.
Kenya has 1.6 million people who are living with HIV out of which 435, 224 of them are adolescents.
Statistics from NACC also show that Nairobi county account for the highest number of 49,904 adolescents followed by Homa Bay with 46,530.
Kisumu has 37,110 and Siaya 33,810.
In 2014, alone a total of 9,400 died from AIDS as a result related illnesses.
Both Otuoma and Ohaga a number young people go on "drug holidays" when they find out that their parents did not disclose their status to them.
A "drug holiday" is a term used by adolescents when they have been taking drugs and later stop after they found out what the drugs are for.
Parents who don't disclose their status to their children who are already on treatment tell them the drugs are for treating TB.
Other threaten their children that if they take the drugs they will die.
So once they learn the truth they stop trusting their parents and end up not taking their medicines.
Denying children information about their HIV status violates their rights to information and privacy.
It also compromises the child's ability to participate in his or her own medical care, an important part of the right to health.
"Even though I was born HIV positive, I will give birth to a HIV negative child." Said Joyce who also added that parents should stop keeping health matters a secret from their children.
She added that the her dream is to be a lawyer so that she can fight for the rights of people living with HIV.
Otuoma also urged couples who are dating to go for couple testing so that they may be able to know about their HIV status.
"If the relationship is involving sex then the couple should go for a HIV test. The counselor will be there to break the news to both of them." Said Otuoma.
He said that many people get into relationships without taking a HIV test and they end up having unprotected sex.
Otuoma and Ohaga both concur that if parents and disclose the HIV status to their children in good time as well as couples, then cases of adolescents and young people dying from AIDS for not talking their medicines would drastically reduce.
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