'I'll keep on fighting'
2005-11-11 09:39
Uganda - A Ugandan honoured by an international human rights group for her campaign to help women like herself - who carry HIV and its often heavy stigma - said her country's Aids policy had become misguided and moralistic.
"Political leaders, religious people have been (campaigning against) the use of condoms, moralising the issue of Aids as if it was a moral dialogue, yet it's a health issue," said Beatrice Were on Thursday, after Human Rights Watch announced she was among this year's recipients of its Human Rights Defender Award.
"It is disheartening to see people undoing what we have worked so hard to achieve," Were said of the fight against HIV/Aids in Uganda. "But because people out there in the international community are recognising our work, this has rekindled my commitment to fight."
Concerns over abstinence
Uganda was once hailed as a model for Africa for its approach to fighting HIV/Aids, with an aggressive campaign led by political, religious and community leaders credited with lowering infection rates from over 20% in the early 1990s to the current 6%. But experts fear those gains could be lost because of what they see as an increasing emphasis on abstinence, encouraged in part by the stance of the United States, a major donor.
The government responds that encouraging abstinence is just part of its broad campaign against HIV/Aids. In the past it has said prevention measures must suit all age groups, so it emphasises abstinence for teenagers but also advocates adults to be faithful and use condoms.
Stephen Lewis, the United Nations secretary general's special envoy for HIV/Aids in Africa, said earlier this year that US cuts in funding for condoms and a new emphasis on promoting abstinence had contributed to a condom shortage in Uganda.
Lewis and Jodi Jacobson, the executive director of the Centre for Health and Gender Equity, also said a campaign to discredit condoms and promote abstinence by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's wife was providing misinformation about HIV/Aids that could cause an increase in the HIV/Aids rate.
Breaking the silence
Uganda has over a million people with HIV/Aids, and a similar number of people have died from HIV/Aids-related illnesses since it was first diagnosed in the country in the early 1980s.
Jonathan Cohen, researcher with Human Rights Watch's HIV/Aids programme, called Were the "human face" of those statistics.
"At every step, Beatrice Were has chosen to break the silence around HIV/Aids rather than to live privately with her illness," Cohen said. "By bringing HIV/Aids out into the open, she has brought hope to countless Ugandans."
Were discovered she was HIV-positive in 1991. She was 37-years-old, unemployed and raising two children on her own - her husband had died of Aids-related illnesses in the 1980s.
When her husband died, she had consulted a women's legal rights group for help fighting her Samia tribal custom of demanding a widow be remarried to a brother or male relative of the deceased husband and that that male relative inherit the dead man's property.
When she found she was HIV-positive, Were signed up with an aid organisation hosted by a hospital run by the Roman Catholic Church, which has an intensive care unit for HIV/Aids patients and provides HIV/Aids patients with food, counselling and medication. She later became a volunteer social worker there.
Making a difference
"I began making a difference in my life, building career, confidence and income," said Were. "At the clinic, I realised that women suffered more from the effects of HIV/Aids than men because they are many in number, are generally poorer and suffer more physically and psychologically."
In 1995, she founded the national community of women living with Aids, which has grown to have 40 000 members today and win accolades for its work in helping women overcome the stigma and challenges posed by HIV/Aids.
She founded the group to unite, "women living with HIV/Aids so they reduce their isolation and stigma, fear and denial of HIV," Were said.
Were will receive the Human Rights Watch award on November 8. Other recipients of this year's award are Omid Memarian, an Iranian journalist and web blogger and Salih Mahmoud Osman, a lawyer and human rights activist from Sudan's western region of Darfur.
- AP