Woman writer speaks out against AIDS

First-time Zimbabwean author Lutanga Shaba is tackling the factors underpinning women's vulnerability to HIV/AIDS in her country with the release of a timely novel. In her book, 'Secrets of a Woman's Soul', Shaba expresses her frustrations with the ongoing stigmatisation of AIDS, which she says "throws an added spoke in the wheel" when it comes to dealing with the pandemic. "I wrote the novel because I was angry. I didn't feel my mother needed to die when she did, and I was angry about the way the stigmatisation around her disease made her silent; the way the medication was hard to access ... and the way the world makes it worse by moralising about the disease," she told Inter Press Service. The UN Development Fund for Women estimates that 55 percent of all HIV-positive adults in sub-Saharan Africa are women, while teenage girls are five times more likely to be infected than boys. Sales from Shaba's book will be used to establish a scholarship fund for young Zimbabwean women who have been orphaned by HIV/AIDS.