HelpAge International Press Release for World AIDS Day

Older Women and HIV/AIDS

30th November 2004 – In line with this year’s theme for World AIDS Day – Women, Girls and HIV/AIDS – HelpAge International pays tribute to the millions of older women around Africa playing a significant albeit widely ignored role in managing the pandemic.

In line with the traditional role of women as care givers, older women are coming out of retirement to tend to their adult children ailing from AIDS and the increasing number of AIDS orphans and other vulnerable children. It is taken for granted that grandmothers are available to care for the sick, yet they remain ignored in programmes and campaigns aimed at eradicating the disease. Many of these older women therefore, receive no training in home-based care. Lack of knowledge about how the disease is transmitted sees them handle the sick without protection in the form of gloves. Some of them feel that to use gloves to handle their own children is tantamount to rejection of their own flesh and blood.

In some cases older women have been physically abused or chased away under suspicion of witchcraft linked to the deaths of many young people from AIDS.

Older women are among the poorest of the poor since culture does not allow women to own property or to inherit it when their husbands pass away. The care roles they undertake therefore push them further into poverty; in addition they receive little or no support from community members who shun them for being in contact with the sick. This leads to isolation of older women who have to bear the emotional burden of AIDS on their own. Due to lack of knowledge, they exhaust their meagre resources in an endless and fruitless pursuit of a cure for AIDS. This may take the form of consulting traditional healers under the belief that their children have been be-witched. Older women who have been through the resultant financial stress are unable to adequately provide for orphans left under their care. Consequently, many drop out of school due to lack of fees, not to mention the lack of food they experience.

HelpAge International calls for older women to be included in strategies, programmes and policies designed to deal with the HIV/AIDS crisis. To ignore them and the vital role they play is to weaken the community survival and coping mechanisms needed to manage the impact of the pandemic. Older women, comprising the bulk of older carers, need education on how to protect themselves from infection as well as how to take care of the sick.

HelpAge International undertakes advocacy at regional and international fora to lobby for recognition of the role of older people in the fight against the disease. Support programmes for those caring for AIDS victims and orphans must be initiated. Often we hear of programmes designed to support AIDS orphans; this support should be extended to older women taking care of them.

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HelpAge International is a global network of not-for-profit organisations working to improve the quality of lives of disadvantaged older people worldwide.

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For more information, please contact: HelpAge International, Africa Regional Development Centre

Tel: +254-020-4446991/4449407/4444289; Fax: +254-020-4441052, Nairobi, Kenya;

Email: [email protected] [2]