Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2007. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Associated Press - December 18, 2007
The New York-based rights watchdog released a report focused on women's treatment in Zambia, based on interviews earlier this year with 83 women in the urban centers of Lusaka and the northern Copperbelt region, as well police, health counselors, and government and non-governmental organizations.
The government has made AIDS treatment drugs free and put more than 93,000 people on them with the help of international donors in Zambia, a southern African nation of 11.5 million that is still largely poor despite recent economic growth. About 16 percent of adults are HIV-positive here. In urban areas, the prevalence rate exceeds 20 percent, with HIV infection rates higher among women.
The report documented a variety of cases where HIV-positive women were prevented from taking AIDS drugs, or from adhering to their proper regimens.
"We would like to commend the way the Zambian government has actively dealt with HIV/AIDS treatment," Nada Ali, the author of the report, told journalists at a press conference. "However, for many Zambian women, receiving an HIV-positive diagnosis might still be equivalent to a death sentence." Today in Africa & Middle East Baghdad car bomb targets alcohol sellers Clashes in Gaza kill 5 Palestinians fighters New charges menace Jacob Zuma in South Africa Click here to find out more!
Stigma against HIV-positive people is still common in many parts of Zambia. In some cases, the fear of violence from their husbands prevented women from getting tested for HIV or beginning or adhering properly to their treatment, according to the report. Some women would hide their medication in flower pots or holes in the ground, or be forced to come up with lies to explain their absence when they went to health clinics, the report said, adding that health counselors are not trained to deal with issues surrounding violence against women.
In other cases, women were left without money for transportation or food after divorce or their husband's death due to property laws that favor men, and the practice of "property grabbing," in which a deceased man's family seizes his widow's property, often rendering her destitute. The result, the report says, is that many women are unable to go to health clinics or keep up a proper diet, which is necessary if AIDS drugs are to be effective.
Human Rights Watch urged the Zambian government to adopt legislation to prevent and deal with sexual and domestic violence, support efforts to change property law, modify health policies and ensure that health counselors can deal with the gender abuse issues, establish shelters for female victims of abuse and strengthen the government's Victim Support Unit.
Elizabeth Mataka, the United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS, said that while the report was timely, community-based programs specifically giving women and girls financial and legal options are more necessary than additional high-level policies on gender.
"Women's organizations must begin now to map out strategies that will address this problem," she said. "We need to move ... from talking to action. There has to be a change of mind-set at the community level."
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