Former HIV/AIDS Ambassador Joyce Dzidzor Mensah got the whole country talking about her again when she wrote a bizarre sort of tribute to her husband, who had died after a battle with an illness nobody seems able to identify.
The manner of her revelation about her husband’s death, plus another follow up post, are just the latest display from Mensah which puts her mental health status under question.
There’s no doubt Mensah has gone through a lot, and she herself has admitted to suffering a series of mental issues in the past including depression that turned suicidal.
Her story is a long running saga, almost like something out of a Mexican soap opera, and it’s all been played out in the public eye.
Dzidzor Mensah’s first partner died of HIV/AIDS in 07. She was 19 at the time and pregnant with her first child. She tested positive for HIV/AIDS in the same year.
“I met a man in my church where I used to fellowship. We fell in love but I didn’t know of his HIV status.
“Though he knew he was HIV positive, he never told me. A member of the church who is a nurse once saw me with him and she called me to advise me. The nurse advised me to be careful with him because she knew of his HIV status. Unfortunately for me, I met the nurse just a day after I had s*x with the man.
“”I then confided in the nurse and she asked me to quickly report at the hospital so that I can be given PEP (Post Exposure Profilaxis). I did exactly that in order not to contract the HIV virus.
I became pregnant though, but I decided to keep the pregnancy.
“My boyfriend fell sick and died before I had the baby. People stigmatized me without knowing if I contract HIV from him or not. I was eventually beaten and thrown out of the house I was living in with my parents. Having nowhere to stay, I went to live in the secretariat of the associations of persons living with HIV.”
“My story. My story never ends. O yes it will not end until my last breath…. I met a man at age 19 and got pregnant for him. He allegedly died of AIDS in 2007. He died when I was still pregnant. After giving birth I was thrown out of the house by my neighbors because I was tagged with AIDS. I was on the street, no food, no money. I then started to talk about AIDS and premarital s*x from the street to the churches until the Ghana AIDS commission officially made me an ambassador to educate people on AIDS.”
Dzidzor Mensah married in 2010, this time to a man who, according to her, only wanted to use her as an opportunity to travel outside the country.
Source: Dzidzor Mensah, again in a facebook post wrote about her second marriage.
“The man I got married to in 2010 only wanted an opportunity to travel outside Ghana and so when the opportunity came, he grabbed it through me , saying goodbye to Ghana and now he lives in London. Because of him, I’ve been banned from traveling to UK. Our marriage ended with a baby girl.”
In 2016, in a letter to Mahama, Dzidzor said:
“My ex-husband decided to run away from Ghana due to stigma which he blamed me severely for.”
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