“I Want to Go Gently”

Abstract

This article examines the views of persons living with AIDS about how they want to die and how they are planning for their deaths. Participants for the study were purposefully drawn from an HIV clinic in an urban town in Ghana. In-depth interviews were conducted with 25 persons living with AIDS. Three preferences of death were identified by the participants. These include the desire for a quick death, death at home, and death without emaciating. Planning for death involved attending church and taking care of children. Inherent in the responses of the participants is the concern for cost of care, dwindling network of family carers, and stigmatization and shame. The article concludes that the government needs to provide support for home-based care, establish a pension for AIDS patients, support families to pay for the funeral expenses of their relatives, and scale up effort to reduce HIV/AIDS-related stigma.