Thursday, March 20, 2008

Local woman recounts experiences encountering HIV/AIDS in Zambia

from the Caledon Citizen

By Becca Smith

As an intern working in Lusaka through a partnership with the Victoria International Development Education Association and Women for Change, I see the impact of HIV/AIDS every day in Zambia.

While people living with HIV/AIDS make up only an estimated 0.3 per cent of the Canadian population, in Zambia approximately 20 per cent of the country is infected, and every individual is affected by the virus. Zambia only makes up 0.17 per cent of the global population, yet it bears three per cent of the world's HIV/AIDS burden. According to World Bank statistics from November 2007, for every HIV-positive individual in southern Africa that receives anti-retroviral treatment, six others are newly infected. AIDS has insinuated itself into every aspect of Zambian society; one cannot discuss poverty reduction, agriculture, education, housing, labour issues, etc. without considering the effects of HIV/AIDS.

On Dec. 1, I had the opportunity to participate in World AIDS Day activities in Lusaka.

I had spent the previous week working with local high school students and representatives of the Irish non-governmental organization 80:20 to create images and paint a mural about HIV/AIDS, to be put on display in an art gallery on World AIDS Day. The creativity, energy, and talent of the teenagers was inspiring.

On World AIDS Day, I spent the morning marching in a parade through downtown Lusaka with other staff from Women for Change, as well as several thousand other representatives of various organizations, companies, and governmental bodies. It was a very moving experience to see so many people walking in solidarity and making a public statement against a disease that is so often hidden and treated as a taboo subject within society.

In Zambia, there are many euphemisms for having AIDS; often, people will just say that someone is "sick," and it is understood that this means they are HIV positive. It is also common to attribute a death to diabetes, respiratory problems, or depression - anything rather than admitting a loved one had AIDS. The shame of revealing a person's HIV status contributes to the spread of misinformation and makes it even more challenging to talk publicly about the disease, even though it is ravaging the country. Arecent report from the U.S. Census Bureau noted that the average life expectancy in Zambia in 2006 was 38 years when taking HIV/AIDS into account, but was 55 years when HIV/AIDS was excluded.

Recently at a Women for Change staff meeting, we had a discussion about how the frequent need for employees to take leave days in order to attend funerals is negatively impacting productivity at work. I cannot imagine a conversation like this taking place in Canada, during which staff debate whether or not it is acceptable to leave work to attend a funeral or burial for the death of someone outside of your immediate family. To put your loved ones in a hierarchy may seem insensitive, but the tragic reality is that there are simply too many deaths and an endless number of funerals to attend in Zambia.

Gender inequalities strongly influence the pattern of infection and contribute to the spread of HIV. Data from the National HIV/AIDS Council of Zambia shows that the HIV prevalence rate for females age 14 to 19 is six times the rate for males of the same age group. Policies that promote marriage as an HIV preventative ignore the startling fact that married women in sub-Saharan Africa are increasingly vulnerable to HIV infection. The organization Human Rights Watch has found that in Zambia, HIV infection rates among young married women are 10 per cent higher than those among unmarried women of the same age. Gender inequalities at the household level mean that many married women do not have the ability to negotiate safer sex or to demand fidelity from their husbands. There are a number of reasons for this: early marriages of girls to much older men, widespread violence against women, sexual abuse of girls, economic dependence on men. Traditional practices can also contribute to the abuse of women's rights and subsequent higher rates of HIV infection among women. One such custom is the paying of lobola, or bride price, often seen as the equivalent of buying a wife, which makes it extremely difficult for a woman to leave an abusive or dangerous relationship.

The stigmatization of people who are HIV positive continues in Zambia, much as it does in Canada. While studying at Queen's University, I volunteered for two years with the local HIV/AIDS Regional Services (HARS) in Kingston. Clients of HARS have access to services and medical treatment that most people in southern Africa will never have the ability to enjoy. Still, these Canadians were often subject to discrimination and were marginalized within society, compounded by other factors such as poverty and substance abuse. In both countries, revealing your HIV positive status involves risking social exclusion and discrimination in many forms.

It is easy to become numbed by the abundance of negative statistics and stories of suffering, but there are also positive signs that give hope for the future. President Levy Mwanawasa and Zambian civil society members have worked actively to make responses to the HIV/AIDS crisis more comprehensive, and to mainstream HIV/AIDS into all aspects of national development plans. There are major efforts being made to scale up access to anti-retroviral treatments in Zambia, to expand usage of voluntary testing and counseling services, to educate people about prevention, and to support vulnerable groups such as orphans. Recently, Elizabeth Mutaka, the executive director of the Zambia National AIDS Network (ZNAN) was appointed as the new United Nations HIV/AIDS special envoy for Africa, a position previously held by Canadian Stephen Lewis.

My experiences with people living with HIV/AIDS in different countries reinforce just how privileged we are as Canadians. I have been involved in community education work on HIV/AIDS in Zambia, Nicaragua, and Guyana, where the need is much greater yet resources are scarce in the face of growing demand. The World AIDS Campaign slogan, Stop AIDS: Keep the Promise has special meaning to me now, when I think of the teenagers I worked with and how they and other Zambian youth deserve a better future.

Becca Smith is a caledon native working through a partnership with the Victoria International Development Education Association and Women for Change.

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