South Africa: AIDS Discrimination Is a Human Rights Violation, Garca Machel Says

"Living with HIV/AIDS is not a shame. You can live with AIDS. Why then do we discriminate?" Graca Machel, the wife of former South African President Nelson Mandela, asked Tuesday in Zambia at a four-day Southern Africa Network of AIDS Service Organizations' conference on stigma. Machel said the entire southern African region faces a common challenge in dealing with the pandemic, and she said the silence around sex in African culture needs to be broken if AIDS is to be dealt with effectively. Stephen Lewis, the UN secretary-general's special envoy to Africa on HIV/AIDS, said, "The strength of Africa lives at the grass roots. All we will need now is to find resources that will deal with issues of orphans, home-based care and all those areas that make it complicated to deal with the stigma and fear of being associated with HIV/AIDS."

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