The children made the request during celebrations of the International Day of the African Child that took place this Saturday, organized by “We-actx For Hope” a dedicated team of Rwandan health care providers.
Speaking during the event, a sixteen-year old child who had attended the celebrations remarked that in the Rwandan society, children living with AIDS were not treated like normal children.
‘‘The problem we mostly meet is that we are shunned out. In our society, you’ll find that the HIV positive child is most often than not an outcast. I’d give you a quick example; the family that I went to live with after my parents died, did not allow me to eat, sleep or play with their children because they were afraid of AIDS,’’ the child countered
Another seventeen old echoed the remarks ‘‘I learnt that I was HIV positive when I was 12[…]and the problem I had to deal with was being shunned out. Most children refuse to take meds mostly because of the way they are treated by their families and this leads to us losing them.’’
The President of ‘We-actx For Hope’, Benekigeri Chantal, said that the problem of shunning out HIV positive children would be solved only if people changed their mindset.
‘‘Our society does not give enough importance to children living with HIV/AIDS, they mostly shun them out, where you find that a parent sends all his other children at school while the HIV Positive child is forced to stay at home. This shouldn’t happen because he is a child just like others.’’ He said
Women’s Equity in Access to Care and Treatment for HIV (WE-ACTx) was created in early 2004 in response to a request from these women for help in accessing ART. Working collaboratively with five local genocide survivors’ associations, the Rwandan Ministry of Health and the Rwandan National AIDS Program, WE-ACTx founding members mobilized resources to develop a treatment program for the survivors.
In Rwanda, HIV prevalence has been stable since 2005 and remains at 3% among adults age 15–49 (4% among women and 2% among men).
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