The Women Who Will End AIDS
Patricia Nalls is a community activist for the human rights of women and girls especially those living with and at risk for HIV/AIDS. She founded The Women’s Collective (TWC), a leading community health and human service agency in Washington, DC that provides services and support for women, girls and their families.
Mary Bowman is a poet, advocate and singer whose work offers a raw and unadulterated look at life as a young woman living with HIV.
Dazon Dixon Diallo founded SisterLove in 1989, a non-profit that supports women living with HIV in Atlanta, GA. A Southerner who possesses a Masters in Public Health, Dazon has a powerful understanding of how race, class, gender and sexuality intersect to continue the worldwide pandemic.
Sonia Rastogi is a member of the second generation of Americans living with HIV: those who were infected in the age of ARVs. Sonia is the Advocacy Coordinator with Positive Women’s Network/U.S., and one of its most articulate and impassioned spokespersons.
‘Rolake Odetoyinbo is a major voice in the international fight against AIDS. Bold, charismatic, and HIV-positive, she comes from the country that bears the world’s second largest burden of HIV. Approximately 3.5 million Nigerians are living with the virus—and most of them are untreated, ashamed and afraid.
Jeanne Gapiya tested positive for HIV in Burundi in 1987 when pregnant with her second child. Her doctor told her that because of her sero-status she had to have an abortion—and then removed her uterus without consulting her. She was the first person in Burundi to publicly and without shame declare herself HIV-positive—and launched a movement.
Rose Dossou was a participant in an early AZT versus placebo trial, Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT), in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire in the mid-1990s. This study sought to further “prove” what was already known in the West: that taking AZT while pregnant could result in an HIV-negative baby. When the study ended, Rose’s son was born with HIV and she realized she had been given a placebo.
Katrina Haslip was a legal activist and woman living with HIV. A self-educated jailhouse lawyer in the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in upstate New York, Katrina she frequently wrote legal briefs in defense of fellow prisoners. While at Bedford she also founded AIDS Counseling and Education (ACE), which offered in-depth HIV education, counseling, and support.