Casablanca (Morocco) (AFP)

"Here, I feel normal, I am treated like a human being". Zineb, 29, HIV-positive for ten years, unfolds in a voice knotted his story made of fear, shame and rejection, during a workshop "Self-esteem" organized by the Moroccan Association to fight against AIDS (ALCS) .

On that day, there are twelve of them confiding in a room in the Casablanca branch, in the presence of a psychologist and a therapeutic assistant. All, except a forty-year-old deemed "very lucky" by the group, have either hidden their disease or experienced the rejection of their loved ones.

"My mother treated me like a murderer, I felt long alone in the world," said Youssef, 28, who said he had committed two suicide attempts.

Today, his friends are "all like him", they together form "a happy band who helps each other". He "lives well" but prefers to testify under a given name "to protect himself", as all HIV positive met by AFP.

- "A taboo subject" -

In a country where 21,000 people are identified as seropositive, according to the ALCS, the subject remains "taboo, because the infection is related to sex, a taboo issue in Morocco", a Muslim country permeated with taboos, Yakoub assures, one of the mediators of the ALCS. "The social rejection is such that some lose everything: family, friends, employment, housing," laments the 25-year-old.

Zineb, like many, hides her medicine to hide her illness. This mother told her family that she was treating herself for diabetes: "my 17-year-old son knows nothing, I can not talk to him, I'm too scared," she says with a smile sad.

"Once you're sick, you're not anybody anymore," echoes Sakina, a mother who "never talks about her illness," except with doctors, mediators and other HIV-positive people.

Like 70% of infected women in this country of 35 million people, Sakina was contaminated by her husband. Her parents-in-law have turned her back on her and she does not dare to reveal to her 15-year-old son that he too is suffering. She has always lied to him, she "sleeps the night," says the mother crying to the group of words.

"A council, especially, do not tell him anything," said a young man. "Make it easier for him to learn from someone else," said a voice.

The psychologist recalls in a neutral tone that individual consultations exist to "think about these difficult questions".

In addition to these speaking groups, ALCS provides hospital-based therapeutic follow-up, prevention and field-based screening campaigns. Founded very quickly after the detection of the first Moroccan case of HIV in 1986, the association now has 36 mediators in about 20 cities and about 30 information / screening centers, including five mobile, funded by grants from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS.

"It's been thirty years that we talk about it, the virus is well known, but the discrimination is still there, with a stigmatization of the society, but also of the medical staff in a hospital environment", regrets Dr Kamal Marhoum El Filali, chief Infectiology department at Ibn Rochd Hospital in Casablanca, which hosts the association.

Amina lived it: "When I went to the hospital to give birth, nobody wanted to take care of me, nobody wanted to touch me, I ended up in intensive care," she remembers indignantly.

"We are lucky to be followed in infectiology: we are well cared compared to others, given the dilapidation and lack of resources in Moroccan hospitals," tempered his neighbor sitting.

- "True asset" -

Considered a "model country" by UNAIDS, Morocco has managed to reduce deaths (350 in 2018) and cases of new infections (-42% between 2010 and 2016, for an average of -4% in South Africa. North), thanks to improved screening, access to treatment and follow-up.

The emergency reception is sometimes saturated, each doctor follows up to 40 patients a day and, in the corridors, the silhouettes emaciated by the virus are hard to see.

But the infectious diseases department is irreproachable. The personalized support provided on site by the mediators of the ALCS in connection with the medical teams is "a real asset", insists Professor Ouled Lamsen, one of the six infectious Ibn Rochd.

"We are a victim of our success: as our results are good, we risk getting rid of aid", worries the president of the ALCS, Professor Mehdi Karkouri.

The allocations must be decided at the Global Fund triennial conference, scheduled for mid-October, in a context of declining funding dedicated to the fight against AIDS and controversies around the management of UNAIDS.

© 2019 AFP