Treatment Literacy and Advocacy By and For HIV Positive Women
The International Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS (ICW) declares our support for universal access to prevention, care, treatment and support for all - December 1st World AIDS Day.
60 women from 15 countries in Africa recently came together, in Kampala, Uganda, 28-30 of November 2005 to discuss treatment advocacy and literacy for women and children living with HIV from a gender perspective.
It was agreed that the lack of power that women have in their relationships not only puts women at higher risk of HIV infection but is also detrimental to the quality of life of HIV positive women, their ability to access treatment and to survive.
Some of the main factors that we have identified that inhibit women's
access to quality care, treatment and support to enable us to stay
healthy include:
- Violence and other violations of our sexual and reproductive rights;
- Lack of economic empowerment;
- Overstretched with the caring of others;
- Lack of information about, and access to, quality health care, HIV
- Insufficient involvement of women in policy programme development;
- Gender inequality and judgmental attitudes - particularly faced by young
Sadly, as we are fighting to improve the lives of all people living with
HIV, by working on practical ways of addressing the above problems, the
First Lady of Uganda is making sure that more HIV women are being added
to our ranks. In a recent interview with BBC World Service, she compared
condom use to murder and theft.
'The message that is being put before you is literally to say if you feel
like having sex go ahead do it as long as you use a condom. By the same
talking, we could also say to you if someone makes you angry and you like
killing them, go ahead and kill them. Or if your friend has money and you
do not have any, go ahead and steal it.'
She also stated that she feels that God punishes people for immoral
behaviour with AIDS.
We believe that such comments are extremely detrimental and insensitive
to the 40 million people living with HIV around the world and in fact to
HIV negative people too. We are concerned that the interests of, and
indeed the lives of, HIV positive and negative women and men are being
sacrificed for political reasons.
At the recent conference, women developed strategies to address these
concerns and meet the needs of their communities. The conference will be
followed by a grant-making programme to implement their ideas. The grant
programme will be led by women with HIV and coordinated by ICW with
support from Tides Foundation.
ICW 2005
If you want to hear more about issues facing women and HIV/AIDS
globally, and what we are doing to change them, visit www.icw.org