Burness Global: Stories

Mariam Yussif (credit: John Donnelly)

ACCRA, Ghana – Over the last decade, support groups for HIV-positive people have flourished around Africa. The best of these groups offer so much: a safe place to talk about the range of issues they face; endless empathy; even connections that can lead to jobs. But rarely have I seen such a need for a group as during a recent visit here, with the Yaddah Dah Allah Muslim Women Association, whose members are HIV positive.

The 35 women share a secret — their HIV status — almost entirely just among themselves. Husbands don’t know. Families haven’t heard. Friends haven’t been told. The reason is simple: Many fear that if they revealed their status, husbands and members of the extended family would kick them out of their homes or worse — even though in almost all cases husbands infected them.

“In the Muslim community, we don’t want to disclose our status to each other,” said Mariam Yussif, the founder of the group. “People would rather kill themselves than bring it out.”

So their escape valve opens only when they meet — the third Thursday of every month. Mariam leads them. She has had a tragic past — her husband and three of her five children have died from AIDS-related causes, she said.

And yet, on a visit recently with a small group of African health journalists attending a Kaiser Family Foundation-sponsored workshop in Accra, Mariam didn’t evoke feelings of sympathy. Instead, we were dazzled by her — she spoke freely and expressed herself with heartfelt precision.

“If we could get the Muslim community to talk about HIV, it would start to do away with the stigma,” she said, standing in front on about a dozen support group members. “Many men have more than two wives, so if he gets infected, it means everyone is infected. And if a Muslim woman is infected in Ghana, she is a prisoner.”

When Mariam finished, Penny Duckham, who is charge of the Kaiser Media Fellowship programs, whispered to me, “She’s a rock star.” Penny was right — Mariam was such an effective speaker that she had the ability to move audiences, and by doing so could greatly help women like herself.

And yet, there wasn’t much else uplifting from our visit. Several Muslim women spoke to us about the troubles in their lives.

“It was so difficult for me to be living with this disease. I need to talk to someone about it, but that wasn’t possible,” said one woman. “So it was such a great joy that I found this group.”

I asked them if they were able to express anger toward their husbands in the group setting. The women all shook their heads. No, they said.

“When we meet, we don’t talk about any anger toward our husbands,” said one. “Instead, we draw strength from each other.”