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| © Mark Engman | |
| Edith (at right) and her daughter Isabel. Isabel says, “I am so proud of my mother.” |
Mark Engman, Director of Public Policy and Advocacy for the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, is in Panama for a conference with UNICEF’s national committees from around the world. Prior to the conference, UNICEF Panama took several visitors to learn about its work in the field, including its partnership with the Panamanian NGO, PROBIDSIDA.
Though Panama's AIDS prevalence rate is less than one percent, the disease is growing most rapidly in young women. Unfortunately, though testing is free, only half of all women are tested for HIV.
Eleven years ago, Edith's life turned upside down.
Happily married and the mother of a young boy, Edith learned that she was HIV-positive—and so was her son. Her husband, who had hemophilia, contracted the disease from a transfusion; he passed it to her, and she passed it to her son. Her husband and son both died from the disease, leaving Edith to care for her daughter Isabel and fight the disease alone.
Isabel, though she did not have the AIDS virus, faced the pain of AIDS in a different way. Only eight years old when her mother was diagnosed with HIV, she watched her father and brother die, and faced discrimination and stigma at school from students and teachers alike.
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| © Mark Engman | |
| Dr. Orlando Quintero, founder and director of PROBIDSIDA, talks with a UNICEF Panama staff member. PROBIDSIDA is Panama’s leading NGO on HIV/AIDS prevention and testing. |
Though the Government of Panama provides treatment for HIV, Edith needed help learning to cope with the effects of the disease. She found it through PROBIDSIDA, a nonprofit organization formed to help people with HIV/AIDS find access to treatment, to prevent mother-to-child transmission, and to fight the stigma associated with the disease. The organization's trained staff and head-high approach to AIDS helped her face her disease, and then to face people who feared her because of the disease, with courage and forthrightness. Now she works for PROBIDSIDA and is a public speaker on living with HIV.
Her daughter Isabel says, "I am so proud of my mother—and now I help spread the message that it is wrong to discriminate against people with AIDS."