AIDS still carries a strong stigma in Africa

By Carola Frentzen Dec 7, 2011, 12:25 GMT

Addis Ababa - When Meaza Birhanu discovered that she was HIV-positive six years ago, she was setting out on a long journey full of suffering.

At times she was simply too weak to stand up. With death staring her in the face, she decided to give her eight-year-old daughter up for adoption to a French family.

However, the reaction from Birhanu's own family was worse than the debilitating physical effects of her illness.

'They didn't want to see me, because they thought that the disease would jump out of my body and infect them,' she said. 'I simply cried all the time, because my family did not even want to let me sleep in their home.'

Stigma and discrimination are an even bigger problem for those infected with the human immunodeficiency virus in Africa, where two-thirds of the world's 34 million people with HIV/AIDS live, than in other regions.

For the sufferers, rejection by their own relatives can even be life-threatening, because it leads many of them to ignore their disease in order not to be excluded from society.

'In Africa, many of those affected start taking antiretrovirals far too late, and this is largely because of the widespread stigma,' AIDS expert Nils Grede of the United Nations' World Food Programme told dpa.

'People just don't want to know that they are sick, because they are frightened of the reaction of their family and friends.'

The stigma is among the main concerns of the 16th International Conference on AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Infections in Africa (ICASA) that runs until Thursday in Addis Ababa.

Groups representing gays and lesbians in particular have had a hard time. Ahead of the conference, they ran into strong opposition from religious leaders in this Christian country, and there was scarcely a hotel in the city prepared to host gay and lesbian meetings.

Lack of education about HIV and AIDS is a problem in Africa. In rural areas, there is widespread ignorance about the hazards of unprotected sex.

Homosexual relations are banned in most countries. In some, such as parts of Nigeria, gays can even be sentenced to death.

Even in countries where same-sex relations are legal, gay and lesbian sex is immediately linked to HIV/AIDS, even though it has been clearly demonstrated that the virus is primarily transmitted through heterosexual relations in Africa.

In the face of such challenges, an increasing number of sufferers are joining forces to reorganize their lives and to support each other.

The Power Woman Group, for example, was co-founded by Evelyne Shiangala in Kibera, a huge informal settlement outside Nairobi that is among Africa's largest slums.

The group of 20 women and 72 children, almost all of whom are HIV positive, makes items like handbags, T-shirts and sandals. The proceeds from their small shop are used to buy food and to put money aside for a rainy day.

'When I told my brothers and sisters in 2004 that I had the virus, they saw it as a death sentence, and immediately began to share out my three children among themselves,' Shiangala says. But she has survived and has been receiving medication from a clinic run by Doctors without Borders.

Shiangala is active in the battle against stigmatising HIV/AIDS sufferers. She also re-established contact with her relatives in recent years.

Birhanu, too, is getting antiretroviral treatment. She has taken control of her life and for the past two years, she has been part of the Urban Garden project financed by USAID, the main US government's development organization.

Growing fruit and vegetables provides her not only with healthy food but also with a steady income along with a new appetite for life. She has come to see the other women working in the gardens as her 'new family'.

'If I had known that my life would evolve in this way, I would never have given my daughter to the French family,' she says with regret.

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