MOZAMBIQUE: AIDS activists develop successful strategies against stigma

PRETORIA, 31 October 2005 (PlusNews) - When aid workers noticed that villagers in Manica province in central Mozambique were shunning the funerals of neighbours known or suspected of having AIDS, they met with the district administrators and chiefs to come up with a solution.

"We explained how HIV/AIDS is transmitted and how rejection isolates families when they are most in need," said Hortensia Gathigi, a Kenyan working with Kubatsirana, a faith-based organisation operating in eight districts of Manica and Sofala provinces.

After the leaders took these messages back to their communities, funeral attendance began to pick up - a small victory, admittedly, but not for those family members suffering rejection.

Kubatsirana conducted a study in Manica province and identified many forms of discrimination against HIV-positive people.

In the family they suffer blame, isolation, and abandonment; at the market, customers don't buy from HIV positive vendors; in minibus-taxis, drivers chase them away because passengers refuse to share the seat; at the water point, women and children scatter when an HIV positive neighbour arrives with her bucket; in church, pastors preach that AIDS is God's punishment; at the clinic, HIV positive people are the last to be examined and the first to be blamed by nurses.

"Mozambique is where Kenya was in the early 1990s - fearful, full of prejudice," said Gathiri.

The HIV/AIDS pandemic is relatively "new" in Mozambique. Large areas were inaccessible during the 17-year civil war, which helped to contain the virus, but when the war ended in 1994 the country opened up and four million people returned home.

The national HIV prevalence rate is 16.2 percent but rises to 19 percent in Manica and 26 percent in Sofala - provinces that border Zimbabwe.

Gathiri and other Mozambican activists presented their findings at a recent conference on stigma and discrimination in Pretoria, the South African capital, held by the Regional AIDS Initiative of Southern Africa, a project by UK-based development organisation, Voluntary Services Overseas.

Paradoxically, Mozambique is one of the two SADC countries that have passed a law to protect HIV-positive people in the workplace, the other being Namibia.

In 1998 the first association of Mozambicans living with AIDS, Kindlimuka, was seeing many cases of workers forced to undergo HIV testing or being summarily dismissed if HIV positive.

In cooperation with trade unions, the Mozambique Network of AIDS-service Organisations (MONASO), and legal institutions, Kindlimuka lobbied members of parliament and helped draft an anti-discrimination law that was approved in 2002.

Kindlimuka and the trade unions subsequently translated the legislation into local languages and have been visiting companies to explain it. But the law only protects those employed in the formal sector - just six percent of all infected people. A broader law that will protect the rights of all HIV-positive people and bar discrimination in schools and hospitals is currently being drafted.

"Throughout this process we learned that advocacy and lobbying are essential, that we need to partner with other institutions and that we must be patient," said Carlos Castro of Kindlimuka.

Gathiri added that the key to success was involving government officials and religious leaders from the outset. "We didn't in Chimoio [provincial capital of Manica], and we failed," she remarked.

The national network of associations of people living with HIV/AIDS, Rensida, founded in 2002 and active in every province, has lobbied successfully to be represented in the structures of the national anti-AIDS response.

"We made a lot of noise until we were accorded our rightful place," said Rensida coordinator Amos Sibambo. "Our slogan is 'Nothing can be done for us without us'."

Setting up support groups is a key Rensida strategy. "Our lives change after joining a group," said Sibambo, "we rebuild our self-esteem, develop a social life and acquire new brothers and sisters, especially if we have been abandoned by our family."

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[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]