Poor women who have no decision making power their partners, specially their husbands, are the victim of HIV/AIDS. This is one of the main reasons why most people with HIV/AIDS are women. This is true not only in poor communities, but in all social classes. Women are suffereing from AIDS which is not their fault, whether they aware or not. So poverty is one of the factor, but not the only one. We need to change the perception.

I come from a country whose HIV prevalence is one of the highest in the world (15.3%). There are thousands of organizations responding to AIDS and most of them focus on prevention of new infections. I see young HIV educators volunteering and getting nothing in return while those at the top, sit on the budget and decide what young people should do.

I am saddened that young people are being used for selfish gains of project leaders and managers.

If the AIDS response is a charity and voluntary fraternity, then let it be for everyone not just young people!

Today, young people are concerned about their future. They want jobs and a good life. As such, only a few young people are willing to get involved in the fight against AIDS voluntarily. They ask, how long shall I be a volunteer? As a young person, I want to have a good career and not just work voluntarily for other people’s selfish gains.

The new book and documentary Diamonds tells the stories of ten women and one girl who are all HIV-positive.

Globally, the incidence of HIV/AIDS among women is rising at an astounding rate. In 1997, 41 per cent of HIV infected adults were women and this figure rose to 50 per cent at the end of 2002.

The feminization of HIV/AIDS is a worrying trend and UNIFEM is committed to addressing the inequalities that lie behind it. But recently UNIFEM partnered with APN+ to take a different look at the impact of the epidemic.

Diamonds: Stories of Women from the Asia Pacific Network of People Living with HIV, a book and documentary, tells the stories of ten women and one girl who are all HIV-positive. The stories plot key moments in their lives, from diagnosis to the realization that they could be part of the change, documenting the journey each woman went through to emerge as an advocate for individuals living with HIV and a powerful voice in the global dialogue on AIDS.

The documentary made in debut at the Bangkok World Film Festival, November, 2009.

The stories within Diamonds are honest and passionate, providing a deep insight into the personal struggles and victories of women and girl children living with HIV.

I will admit to shedding more than a few tears while I read these stories. They are bravely honest and a genuinely good read.

Statistics taken from the very useful Gender and HIV/AIDS web portal

Japan appears to be the only developed country where the number of HIV positive and AIDS infected people is growing. These statistics about the spread of HIV and AIDS in Japan are particularly alarming because cases of infection are decreasing in rest of the developed world (according to UNAIDS).

According to the AIDS Trend Committee, 2008 was the year with the highest number of new cases recorded: 432 people were diagnosed with AIDS and 1113 as HIV positive. So far the statistics for 2009 are no more reassuring: in June, 249 people were diagnosed HIV+ and 124 with AIDS.

Individuals with HIV/AIDS are mostly male, homosexual and in their 20s and 30s. The causes of the increase in HIV diagnoses are most likely a lack of information and a need for an awareness raising campaign.

The government ignores the problem

The Japanese government has not taken any steps to acknowledge the issue. While organizations such as WADS, JFAP and others seek to raise the level of public awareness, government policies have not proven to be very effective so far.

Though there was a recent election in Japan, none of the competing parties addressed the problem in their manifestos. An anonymous comment on the AIDS & Society Association’s blog highlights this point [in Japanese]:

AIDS countermeasures disappeared from the election debate. Mm, so is that the Japanese government’s intention I wonder? Everywhere in the world international conferences about AIDS are held, and what is  emphasized is the need for ‘government’s leadership’ but though every official announcement or statement by the Japanese government has taken this line, in matters regarding internal policy, little is done! Is that OK?

HIV positive bloggers speak out

HIV positive and AIDS infected individuals have learnt to express their feelings in online diaries.

Ryuta started his blog a few hours after he was told he was HIV positive, as a way to fight, he says. In this post, he recalls the moment he first knew he was infected [in Japanese]:

“Today, I was led into a room, where a doctor standing in front of me told me that I am HIV positive.

“Let’s check your number together, ok? 295657. It is yours, right?”

“Yes, 295657. Correct”

“Look at this paper. This value stands for the quantity of virus. Usually it is under 1.0 but in your case it is 105.00”

“I see”

“This is the test result. It means that you are positive”

Hearing that, I check the paper again”.

A family secret

Rana, a 26 year old woman, shares her thoughts in her blog over the decision whether to let her friends and family know that she is HIV positive.

I haven’t told my family that I am ill. I feel sorry for them, so I can’t.
I really am a disobedient daughter. I also think that it’s better if they don’t know. Of course, since this is not an illness that I can bear by myself I told it to my best friends. Because I’d like them to support me and because I’d like them to understand what being positive means.

Blogging til the end

Among the first Japanese bloggers to keep an online diary about having AIDS was Eizu, a 23 years old prostitute who, in 2006, chronicled her deteriorating condition until she died. Though she could write only a few posts until she became too weak to continue, a friend of hers kept on updating the blog until the end. Eizu’s words still remain on the web.

This blog-post was originally published at www.globalvoicesonline.org in a longer version.

Kenya:

Repacted was formed in 2001 by young theater artists from the Nakuru Players Theater Club in Kenya and deals with behavioral changes among Kenyan youths on social issues like reproductive health and HIV/AIDS. The project employs magnet theater, their forum theater initiative to have a forum to discuss issues that people will not have discussed in their day to day life, not even within the family setup because of taboo and cultural practices. Here is a video depicting their mobilization exercises:

With the help of a Rising Voices micro grant the Repacted members are also being taught to blog to share their issues with the world. Here is what some of the members are discussing:

MCCJEX discusses about the practices in Kenyan schools:

(The practice of) sex in school is high that now-a-days its more played than any other games in the field. Youths between 7 to 20 years know it better than any other person.[…] No single girl or boy is found without relationship. Towards this, I think condom should be distributed in schools.

Repacted Members. Image Courtesy Repacted/Rising Voices

However the solution is not so simple. Stigma and discrimination are among the many challenges the project faces and tries to overcome:

Stigma and discrimination needs a creative approach because it is affecting the fight against HIV from all angles. Giving out condoms in public is still a problem. During the outreaches young people take condoms in secrecy they don’t want to be seen by the community because the community will associate them with sexual intercourse.

Republic of Congo:

Currently 79,000 people (or 3.5 percent of all adults) are living with HIV in Congo, and 6,400 people died of AIDS. AZUR Development organization carried out a project in 2006 in Pointe-Noire, the capital of the Republic of Congo concentrating on the psychological and social supports for 100 people with HIV. According to Juhie Bhatia, Public Health Editor at Rising Voices:

The organization is now taking things a step further, by documenting the stigma and discrimination faced by people infected and affected by HIV/AIDS in Congo. They are training communication officers and leaders of local HIV and AIDS organizations, members of their AIDS Network Africa initiative, in digital story telling (including video and photography), podcasting, and blogging. Each communication officer will then use this technology to share stories of how HIV/AIDS is affecting the local community where he or she works.

Training is going on. Image courtesy Azur Development/Rising Voices

An HIV-positive woman lost her baby during childbirth at a hospital in Pointe-Noire because she was HIV positive and no midwife wanted to touch her. Many of them after treatment with PMTCT [Program for Prevention of Mother to Child] are abandoned… Another HIV-positive pregnant woman was saved by a midwife trainee, although her child died after birth; again in this case the midwife feared infection.

…Rejection, reluctance, and the abandonment of women infected with HIV continues.

This post shares a story of ignorance and discrimination:

At Pointe-Noire, Congo, a HIV-positive married man and father was released from prison when the police became aware of his HIV status. The deep meaning of his story must be analyzed. [..] He was released because the policemen feared that he would infect other prisoners.

The Azur Development is also using community radios to combat the stigma and raise awareness of issues related to HIV/AIDS:

We often hear that parents don’t want to spend their money on an HIV-positive person, since the person is regarded as ‘dying’ and therefore there’s no need to waste their time. These radio programmes therefore are aimed at educating families about the fact that living with HIV is not a crime and everyone should be loved. Solidarity should be shown for people living with HIV.

Ukraine

Ukraine has an estimated 323,000-425,000 injecting drug users and one of the fastest growing HIV epidemics in Europe. Pavel Kutsev of the Ukrainian foundation for drug users and HIV positive people, Drop-in-Center, uses blog posts, photos, podcasts, and online video to share his experiences working at a harm reduction facility based in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Members of Drop In Center. Image Courtesy Drop In Center/Rising Voices

Pavel advocates for substitution therapy:

Substitution therapy is one of the most effective tools to stop the epidemic of HIV/AIDS and it is legal — this is the message we should deliver to society. If we succeed, we would significantly improve the lives of those living with HIV and drug addictions.

Lebanon

Last year Rami Zurayk wrote a post about the poorest area of Lebanon:

Akkar is the poorest district of Lebanon: a recent UNDP report found that 63% of the families are deprived and face serious poverty. Located in the extreme north of the country, Akkar is an agricultural district, with an estimated rural population of 80%, the highest in Lebanon. […] Akkar was under quasi-feudal rule till recent times, and the current social and economic relations are still heavily impregnated with this history. [...] This has resulted in tremendous social and economic inequality: Akkar has, according to the UNDP, the highest level of inequality in Lebanon. The Lebanese state bears much responsibility for this situation: public investments in basic infrastructure and services such as health and education but also in agricultural development and small industries have been minimal. Poverty and inequality lead to extremism and to political violence. Major investments are immediately required in the basic sectors, such as health and education, but also in the productive sectors, such as agriculture, in order to help the poor construct sustainable livelihoods.

Bahrain

Poverty does not come to mind when one thinks of the Gulf countries, but in some there are huge differences in living standards amongst citizens. Khalid writes from Bahrain [translated from Arabic]:

It may be that, on average, there is no extreme poverty in Bahrain, by the criterion of living on less than one dollar a day – although extreme caution is needed regarding this criterion, which concerns the poor of Africa in particular, and those who sleep on the ground and cover themselves with the sky… Nevertheless, there are Bahrainis living on less than $5 a day! People who get 50 dinars [$132] of [government] assistance! And there are those who live in the Kingdom of Bahrain not on dollars or dinars, but on the charity of good people – because they have lost their identity papers proving they are Bahraini citizens!
What is the meaning of a decent life that is guaranteed to citizens by the constitution?!

Morocco

Duncan is a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco, and at the beginning of this year he wrote about his impressions of poverty in the region he is working in:

Different communities and groups of people have different ideas about what it means to be poor. In the United States, the poverty line is something like $18,000 per year, which works out to about $50 a day. Worldwide, a person is considered impoverished if he/she lives on $1 per day or less. Here in my community, the people are mostly somewhere in between those two figures. It’s harder to measure people’s wealth here, as most are self-employed farmers whose product is not sold, but consumed within the house. Some men work outside of the community in bigger cities and have a salary, but not much of that money makes it back here. The main source of income generation is herding sheep and goats and selling them when they get big. […] In my communities, no one (that I’ve seen) is dying of hunger. It may just be bread, but I believe that people can always feed themselves. There are some health problems due to malnutrition, but not severe. Water borne illnesses are a problem, but nothing like other parts of the third world. Living in a mountainous, sparsely populated place means that most water is coming from springs without facing too much threat of contamination. As there is little access (and people don’t take advantage of what is available to them) to health care, infant and maternal health is a problem, but I don’t believe that infant/maternal mortality rates are as high as other places. What I’m trying to say is that life in my community is hard and people are impoverished, but there are other parts of the world where it’s much worse. Getting by on subsistence agriculture and herding doesn’t provide a lot of surplus, but people do have enough to get by.

However, in a post earlier this year, Cabalamuse expressed a more pessimistic view:

While frolicking tourists sunbathe on beaches and dine in swanky resorts, while a few thousand elite Moroccans are living high on the hog, millions of malnourished, destitute, and sallow Moroccans in remote rural areas scratch the dirt for survival and take shelter in dwellings so sparsely furnished and poorly built that they look like caves. In this post-apocalyptic diorama, they sleep swallowed in whatever clothes and blankets they own to avoid freezing to death; they cook in tin cans; their women bleed to death giving birth; their children die of diseases the modern world thought eradicated; their men are despondent; weather permitting, they trek over xeric dirt roads and down jarring mountain slopes for countless hours and miles to reach a paved road. They share this country with us, but they live a different reality. The only sign of a government they see in their regions is a tattered flag whipped by the wind.

For more on poverty in Morocco see this post.

Egypt

Nevertheless, the development initiatives that are taking place around the region give hope to some. In Egypt, Lozah recently visited some youth centres in Aswan that are participating in an initiative encouraging girls and women to utilise traditionally male-dominated spaces:

As the taxi was speeding down the incredibly bumpy alley, I looked around me trying to picture the youth centre that would eventually appear among all this rubble. One flat tire later, we finally made it to the centre, which was really just a very run-down two-story building. I stepped into the centre to be enthusiastically greeted by a group of girls and women, and the director of the centre Hagg Sayed. They proceeded to tell me about the work they’d been doing to get girls more involved in centre activities, and to get women more involved in centre governance. […] These youth centres offer children a much-needed safe space to just be kids, a place where they can run around and play and engage in constructive activities. But these centres have long been non-inclusive of girls, largely due to societal perceptions. The idea of the youth centre as a place unsuitable for girls is deeply entrenched in the community (and probably across the country) and many parents were worried about their daughters’ reputations if they were to become involved in centre activities. That’s why prior to implementing the initiative itself, it was important to first build trust with the local community. […] Gradually, opinions and perceptions changed.

The next step was to get the girls involved in sports. […] Today girls are credited with winning numerous trophies in soccer, weight-lifting, and table tennis among others. Furthermore, the once sceptical male members of the centre today attend all the girls’ tournaments, enthusiastically cheering them from the sidelines. Talking to the girls, it was impossible not to notice how proud they were. […] To see firsthand the changes that have occurred in these communities was truly inspiring. This isn’t to say that everything is now perfect there. Keep in mind that these are some of the poorest villages in Aswan, some of the poorest in Egypt. These villages face a whole host of problems related to poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, lack of healthcare, lack of clean water, pollution, and other problems that are common to most Egyptian villages. These children are deprived of a lot of things and so many of their rights are violated. But this initiative has managed to make things a little bit better by fulfilling a very important right: at least now, these girls aren’t deprived of their right to a childhood.

This post discusses women’s role in Egypt’s development.

Women are affected by HIV in countless ways. They are the caretakers of husbands, children, parents and neighbors living with HIV/AIDS. They worry about how to protect themselves and their children from infection. Sexual coercion and violence against women are rampant inside and outside marriage, heightening their risk of infection.   Those living with HIV/AIDS, or whose partners die of AIDS, are often beaten, stigmatized and rejected by their families.

Ensuring equal access to prevention, treatment, care and support for women and girls requires ending the gender inequality and discrimination that drive the pandemic. Women are put at risk of contracting HIV in countless ways: widespread sexual coercion and violence; marriage of young girls to much older men; lack of access to HIV information, sexuality education, and reproductive health services all fuel girls’ and women’s vulnerability. Worldwide, in diverse contexts, women and girls do not have equal access to education, or the power to earn a livelihood, control their relationships, or make their own life choices. As a result, today half of the people living with HIV/AIDS are female, and rates of infection in women and girls are rising.

Three priority actions

Changing the HIV/AIDS prevention paradigm to reduce and eliminate, as a central priority, girls’ and women’s vulnerability to HIV requires three priority actions.

First, to reach girls and women, HIV/AIDS policies and budgets must expand access to sexual and reproductive health services, not just build separate HIV facilities. Reproductive health services are established and accepted by families and communities. They have critical core capacities we can build on to provide the full range of reproductive health services, including quality pregnancy and delivery care, testing, diagnosis and treatment for sexually transmitted infections, including HIV; male and female condoms, and other contraceptives. By investing in these services, we will strengthen national health systems as a core foundation to meet all public health goals.

Our second priority is to raise new generations to treat each other differently. A major avenue for this is comprehensive sexuality and gender education—that not only provides full and accurate information about HIV/AIDS, but also helps young people build skills for equality in relationships; respect the right to consent in both sex and marriage; and end violence and sexual coercion. Such programs provide girls with safe spaces, free from harassment and discrimination; alternatives to early marriage; and activities to help build their self-esteem and confidence. These programs help boys learn to take responsibility for their own behaviors and understand that violence and coercive sex are neither their birthright, nor proof of masculinity.

Third, we must increase investment in technologies which put the power of prevention in women’s hands. This means subsidizing universal access to female condoms so that they are affordable and available to all women and girls. It means doubling research and development financing for microbicides, and continued funding for vaccine development.

Beyond these three priorities, women, who know women’s realities, must be included in decision-making and in leadership at all levels and in all sectors. This includes setting and monitoring of gender equality goals in all sectors—to secure the laws, economic opportunities and resources, education and social recognition—that will empower girls and women.

However an epidemic has hit the Indian farmers. Increasingly farmers are resorting to extreme measures like taking their own lives en masse to bail out of pressures of indebtedness and poverty and this has been happening year after year.

Devinder Sharma, an India based food and trade policy analyst who blogs at Ground Reality, informs:

60 farmers have committed suicide in the month of July (2009). By Aug 10, another 16 had taken their lives. That such a deadly drama continues to be enacted in the farms despite a number of committees and relief measures speaks volumes about the criminal apathy that prevails among the urban elite and the policy makers. The tragedy is that no one is keen to come to grips with the reasons that lead to this never ending saga of human suffering.

And why are these farmers committing suicide? Freelance journalist Nita J. Kulkarni explains in her blog A Wide Angle View of India:

Farmers fell into debt because of a combination of high farming costs – exorbitantly priced hybrid (so-called high yielding) seeds and pesticides sold by multinationals and a lack of a good price for their produce, partly due to imports. Drought added to their woes. Irrigation was too expensive for these farmers and the state government didn’t help.

Indian blogger S Gupta slams the ineffectiveness of the government relief systems.

Sonia Faleiro, an award-winning journalist and writer from India explains how the cotton farmers in Vidarbha region of the Maharashtra state are stuck into this quicksand of debt without the help from the State.

One diseased crop or the misguided purchase of spurious seeds, for example, necessitates a loan. Only five percent of farmers are eligible for loans from cooperatives and banks, usually because of a previous default. The remainder are forced into the grip of private, often hostile moneylenders who extract approximately Rs 500 interest every four months on every Rs 1,000 borrowed.

The burden of debt becomes unbearable, tips over at any small provocation by nature, and farmers commit suicide.

Vikas writes at Associación Prabhat, the blog of a non-profit organization registered in Spain and India to promote and support community developmental efforts in the forgotten parts of India. He is outraged by the inaction of the government and lack of concern of others:

If government want to solve farmers problem then why not farmers received special package after drought or flood (more often in Bihar). Why farmers in many part of country are denied even legal right to credit from commercial bank… Why no one is talking about malnutrition and hungers in many part of India (25% world poor and hungry lives in certain part of India) ?

Why there is no news of slow systematic massacre of farmers in many part of India?

I guess India is too busy in its economic progress and just want to live in dream that it’s getting closer to developed world (and 25% world poor living in India are non-existent).

Indian film maker, teacher, writer and blogger Harini Calamur shows how the media ignores the plights of the farmers resorting to suicide, by comparing it to the much coverage on celebrities:

On the day Shahrukh Khan got detained for two hours [..] 21 farmers committed suicide in Andhra Pradesh because they couldn’t pay off their debt.

But, farmers committing suicide cannot be sponsored, it does not drive up TRP’s and it definitely is not conducive for off the cuff ranting by our esteemed ‘journalists’.

Himanshu Rai , an IT expert and blogger, also points out to the selectivity of Indians in highlighting problems:

The increasing disparities between rural and urban sector is creating big vacuum in the development model.The irony is that nobody bothers about the poor any more or need for a real change.

The urban class, which constitutes less than 5% of the population, that gets disproportionate coverage. Job shredding at the airlines becomes bigger issue than the mass suicide of farmers in our country.

A recent report by the Navdanya Trust, an Indian campaign group, showed that “there were now more hungry people in India than in sub-Saharan Africa. And its hungriest of people are its producers – the farmers”.

The farmers are protesting. But their only tool is suicide. After four years of drought, 5,000 farmers in Indian state of Jharkhand have signed a suicide pact complaining that government is not taking any steps to improve their conditions.

Indian philosopher, environmental activist, eco feminist and writer Vandana Shiva blames it on the negative economy in the agricultural sector and globalization. However, with an unemployment rate of more than 7% it is unlikely that the farmers will be able to switch profession to survive.

Mitti, a short documentary made by amateur film makers Vibhu Mohunta and Ashish Dhadade shows the plights of the Indian farmers.

An award winning Indian development journalist P. Sainath at Counterpunch shows poverty and hunger are growing rapidly amongst the Indian farmers:

Millions of small and marginal Indian farmers are net purchasers of food grain. They cannot produce enough to feed their families and have to work on the fields of others and elsewhere to meet the gap. Having to buy some of the grain they need on the market, they are profoundly affected by hikes in food prices, as has happened since 1991, and particularly sharply earlier this year. Hunger among those who produce food is a very real thing. Add to this the fact that the “per capita net availability” of food grain has fallen dramatically among Indians since the “reforms” began: from 510 grams per Indian in 1991, to 422 grams by 2005. (That’s not a drop of 88 grams. It’s a fall of 88 multiplied by 365 and then by one billion Indians.) As prof. Utsa Patnaik, India’s top economist on agriculture, has been constantly pointing out, the average poor family has about 100 kg less today than it did just ten years ago.

The poor Indian farmers will continue to suffer if there are lack of proper groundwater management, as geologist Suvrata Kher explains. The unavailability of easy credit facilities like micro-credit and lack of diversification of crops or other earning opportunities will add to their miseries. They are stuck in the cycle of poverty and the natural disasters like droughts pull them into the abyss. Economist and environmentalist Sanjeev Sanyal opines that India needs to radically rethink its agricultural sector to stop these deaths.

As stated, several links were drawn within the story between the advancement of women and development progress. Perhaps one of the most personally striking observations to me however, as an obstacle to development, was the distinction made between the spending habits of women relative to men:

One reason involves the dirty little secret of global poverty: some of the most wretched suffering is caused not just by low incomes but also by unwise spending by the poor — especially by men.

Citing a study of MIT economist, Esther Duflo that charts the spending habits of male and female farmers in the Ivory Coast, the authors note that a financially lucrative harvest for men results in more money spent on alcohol and tobacco. In contrast, a good yield for women means more money spent on food, and correspondingly, an improvement to child health and nutrition. The writers cite this fact as impetus for government and donor reform movements with respect to economic opportunity, inheritance law, as well as the increase of microfinancing schemes geared specifically to women.

Beyond governments however, I believe this gender differential is a significant point to emphasize within a community and to its members, both women and men. As a proven, documented fact, the weight of the implication—food or cigarettes—goes beyond community gossip circles, and through the pigeonhole of the home. For poor families, spending habits are not just domestic issues; they are the difference between hunger and nutrition, sick and healthy, home and street.

So, if women as breadwinners, by virtue of their financial prudence, have the potential to affect this reality, it would not only lead to their empowerment but the well-being of their families, communities and countries. The consequence of proper spending habits is a message that must be systematically translated, not just to governments but on the ground– to both women and men in poor communities. Comprehensive education and awareness programs for both men and women that encourage and support a women’s right to work (and correspondingly their equal status in society), as well as sound domestic budgeting decisions and are vital to development success.

Morocco

Duncan is a Peace Corps volunteer working on a water infrastructure project in Morocco, and he has written some personal reflections on attitudes towards HIV/AIDS in the rural area he is working in. He believes, while the prevalence of HIV in Morocco is low among the general population, HIV/AIDS could prove to be a great public health risk to the country as a whole:

There are a number of factors that make the country vulnerable to the disease becoming wide spread.

First is ignorance about the disease. Speaking generally, people don’t know what it is. If people have heard of it they know no specifics and what they know might very well be wrong. They don’t know how it is transmitted. People say that the disease is transmitted by sharing toothbrushes, going to the hammam (public bath), and by being breathed on. I’ve never heard someone say that sex is a mode of transmission for the disease.

Second is that cultural boundaries that discourage honest discussion of the topic. This is a very religious society where appearing pure is very important to fitting into one’s community. So this makes it difficult to bring up such important issues as condom use.

Third (seemingly contradicting the previous issue) is the prevalence of prostitution in the country. This is particularly the case for my province, Khenifra, which is known for its prostitution. I’ve heard that the province has three of the four biggest prostitutions towns in the country. One of these centers is very close to me and I know that men from my village visit prostitutes there. They’ve told me. Compounding this problem is the fact that many of the sex workers in these prostitution centers come from out of town. I believe these places could easily become spreading points for the disease.

In sum, it’s a topic that people are ashamed to talk about and no one knows anything about.

Read more about Moroccan attitudes to HIV/AIDS in this post.

Sudan

Last year Bahraini blogger Suad attended a workshop in Cairo to raise awareness about AIDS, and she later wrote the story of Aisha, a Sudanese woman who contracted the virus through a blood transfusion. Aisha describes the process of falling ill, and how she finally discovered what was happening [translated from Arabic]:

After a few months I lost a lot of weight and it was accompanied by other symptoms like persistent diarrhoea, fatigue, fever, and inability to sleep. Once again I was taken to a laboratory for analysis of my blood, and this time the result came back in an envelope sealed with red wax. The doctor told my husband the truth about my illness, but my husband was not open with me about the matter; all he said was that it was an illness like blood pressure or diabetes, and that we would not be able to enjoy marital relations.

Then my husband took me to another doctor, who opened the envelope in front of me and told me that I had AIDS. I was stunned, and didn’t have time even to cry from the terrible shock. I’m infected with AIDS?? Since when, and how? The doctor replied, “Ask yourself. Do you remember what you have been doing that this deadly disease was transmitted to you?” In this way the doctor simply marked me as a prostitute without knowing anything about me. I told him that I was a married woman, and had never had any illicit relations outside marriage. At that point my mother and my husband came into the doctor’s room, and the doctor directed his anger at my husband, accusing him of giving me the disease. I felt really angry with my husband, and began to attack and rebuke him while crying. He tried to defend himself, but I didn’t want to listen to him. In the meantime my mother was hugging me. From that day, my relations and those of my family with my husband soured; fingers of accusation were pointed at him until the results of the tests came, showing that my husband and children were free of the disease. I apologised to my husband, and then realised that the disease had been transmitted to me by way of blood given to me in the hospital.

Yemen

Yemen has addressed HIV/AIDS in its national development agenda, but in a post last year, Omar Barsawad wrote that much needs to be done:

Even if Yemen is much more ahead of its Arab neighbors in tackling HIV/AIDS, it’s still a long way from making facilities and medication easily available and accessible to those afflicted. HIV/AIDS testing facilities are available in all major medical centers and labs. But, it’s when one has tested positive that the problem starts; it then becomes extremely difficult for the afflicted. At the moment, HIV/AIDS infected people have to travel and go all the way to Sana’a, Yemen’s capital city, for them to have their CD4 cell count and viral load tested; it’s only by having these tests, that a patient can be properly treated and medicines can be suitably prescribed. [...] For HIV/AIDS medication too, patients have to travel, regularly (every 3 or so months) to Sana’a to receive the medicines; they are not available in other Yemeni medical centers or pharmacies. One can only imagine how difficult and exhausting this can be for the already mentally strained, HIV/AIDS afflicted person and the people around him. It costs much money traveling all the way to Sana’a; and food and accommodation cost even much more. [...] And though, compared to two or so years ago, many people now are aware of HIV/AIDS – most simply don’t understand the disease; and some people still consider it disgraceful and shameful for one to be afflicted by HIV/AIDS.

Egypt

However, it seems that steps are being made to destigmatise the disease in some countries in the region. The Egypt Guy recently had his first HIV test at a government lab:

To my amazement, the way I was received by the doctors prior to the actual testing was pretty welcoming. I found that they didn’t ask for a name, but rather for a pseudonym and a birthdate to be my identity there. Then, I was sent to a counselor whose job was to give simple information about AIDS and HIV. The guy didn’t show any signs of disrespect for the fact that I’m going to check if I have HIV, which was astonishing. I heard that until very recently AIDS was seen as such a taboo even by doctors. And after the counseling session they gave me a few condoms and lubricants, and three booklets with information about AIDS, and then I went to have the test. I’ll go get the results next Sunday, hopefully it’ll be negative, wish me luck!!

Oh, I also didn’t pay a penny for any of that.

It was a very nice experience that I didn’t expect to have at a government lab, and I’m happy my country is having a more liberal approach to sexually transmitted diseases and is actually propagating against the whole stigma that’s associated with them, especially HIV and AIDS.

You can read about an initiative by Egyptian bloggers to destigmatise HIV/AIDS here.