Accordia Spotlight

A New Hope: Rose Kaweesi

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In Sub-Saharan Africa, 12 million women live with HIV/AIDS. Already challenged by poverty, these women face the stigma of the disease and often have few resources to seek medical attention. A few years ago, Rose Kaweesi, a 40 year old woman living in Kampala, Uganda, thought she was about to die. She lost her husband to AIDS in 1994 and by 1999 she too was sick. “I was getting weaker and weaker. I had a lot of complications – fever, headaches, sores, and so on. Even travelling 20 kilometres in a taxi would make me feel worn out,” she recalls.

Rose’s life turned around when she was referred to the Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI) in 2003 and was placed on anti-retroviral therapy as part of a study at the IDI. This study examined innovative ways of delivering anti-retroviral therapy that would reduce the cost of treatment without compromising quality. “Now I’m OK; I have strength. I do things which I used not to do. I can walk a long distance. Even running, I can manage. There is a great change,” says Rose.

Despite such obvious benefits of therapy, at that time Rose faced hostile rumours from ill-informed community members. “They said those drugs would kill me. I had to close my ears. I told them that I was already infected with HIV. We would see if taking drugs meant dying faster,” she recalls.

Today, thanks to the care she has received at IDI, Rose is a strong and healthy individual living with HIV and her outlook has been transformed.

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