LUSAKA, ZAMBIA – Ireen Mpundu, 17, works as a tailor and sells tomatoes, vegetables and sweets at a market near her home in Garden, a compound of Lusaka, Zambia’s capital. Mpundu says she has to earn money to look after her young brother and herself because both their parents died from HIV.
“My mother was the first to die,” she says with teary eyes. “She died in 2008 when I was 14 years old. Then, several months later, my dad also became very ill and passed on.”
Mpundu, who is living with HIV, says she was born with the virus. She says that after her parents died, none of their relatives bothered to take her and her brother in.
But she says she is used to being a caretaker. Mpundu says that she had to nurse her father, a plumber, during his illness. She looked after him at home and at the hospital until he died.
When her parents died, she says she stopped going to school for while.
“I was so depressed that I could not concentrate at school, and I also did not have any support or money to buy books and pay for my fees until eventually I started to do some tailoring and to sell tomatoes and vegetables at the market near home,” says Mpundu, whose mother had been a tailor.
She says she uses the meager profits she accrues from selling tomatoes, vegetables and sweets to look after her and her brother’s basic needs. She is now back in school, and she uses the money she earns from her tailoring to buy their books and pay for their school fees.
“My brother goes to school during the day while I am sowing and selling,” she says. “Then I go to school in the evening.”
But she says that living with HIV makes these daily responsibilities difficult. Health practitioners have advised her to maintain a balanced diet, but she can’t always afford proper meals. Some days, she says she feels too sick to attend classes and to take care of her brother.
There are many other young women in Zambia who, like Mpundu, are directly or indirectly affected by the HIV and AIDS epidemics.
With HIV prevalence higher among women than men in Zambia, experts say the epidemic now has a women’s face here and, therefore, requires more specialized intervention programs. Women living with HIV say that women must be taught how to live positively with it. The government offers free antiretroviral drugs, ARVs, and Zambians look to their newly elected president to continue efforts to combat the epidemic here. Meanwhile, nongovernmental organizations, NGOs, are working to support people living with HIV and AIDS and to prevent new cases.
With a prevalence rate of 14 percent, Zambia has one of the world’s worst HIV and AIDS epidemics, according to the United Nations. The HIV prevalence rate among Zambians ages 15 to 49 is 12 percent for men yet 16 percent for women, according to the most recent Zambia Demographic and Health Survey in 2007.
Women are biologically more vulnerable to HIV infection than men, according to AIDS Epidemic Update 2009, a report by the Joint United Nations Program on HIV and AIDS. The report attributes this vulnerability to entrenched gender norms and inequalities that lead to power imbalances in relationships, reducing the ability of women to control or negotiate sexual relations and condom use.
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