HIV-positive indigenous women are doubly stigmatized

This is what reveals the final report of the project home based care for Indigenous women living with HIV/AIDS implemented by AZUR Development and ACIP in the department of Lékoumou, a project funded by Planet Wheeler Foundation.

Called pygmies, the indigenous people in the province of Lékoumou live in extreme poverty and away from the majority of the population (the Bantu). They live in huts, surviving thanks to the products of hunting and gathering in the forests. Pygmies have little access to education and basic social services. They are discriminated by the Bantu people, who generally consider themselves superior to Pygmies.

Many pygmy women and men serve as the cheap labor for the Bantu people. But when HIV/AIDS get involved, it further complicates an already precarious situation. Indigenous women are also vulnerable to HIV/AIDS and doubly stigmatized.

That is what the project found in the province of Lékoumou. Among indigenous peoples, people with HIV have difficulty talking about their disease and even have less access to care. They are already poor and living far from the hospital Sibiti where they can have access to care and treatment for HIV/AIDS.

When they come for the first consultations at the hospital in Sibiti, after being tested HIV positive, the indigenous women did not usually return. That’s understandable. Who will pay for transportation, meals and stay in Sibiti so they could hope to survive HIV/AIDS? The answer is easy to find: anyone!

Already regarded as “less than nothing” by some Bantu people, it is difficult to imagine that they can look at them.

AZUR Development and ACIP have wanted to make something new, implementing a project to train HIV positive Indigenous and Bantu women so that they take care of themselves and their peers.

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Sylvie Niombo