Munyaradzi Chimwara

Munyaradzi is the Project Lead on COMPASS Zimbabwe, advocating for quality and affordable health service delivery in Zimbabwe. His background is in media production. He got involved in microbicides in 2005 while producing a radio show on HIV/AIDS and subsequently attended Microbicides 2006 in Cape Town, South Africa. During the conference Munyaradzi noted and appreciated the role that advocacy and advocates play in microbicides trials. After having the opportunity to attend a Track D session, “Beyond Involvement: Civil society’s role in making ethical progress towards a microbicide”, conducted by the late Omololu Falobi of the Nigeria HIV Vaccine and Microbicides Advocacy Group, Munyaradzi felt he was challenged to do something about the lack of advocacy initiatives in the Zimbabwe microbicides research landscape.

Fellowship Focus
Munyaradzi’s project mainly addressed how the media reports on and is engaged in HIV prevention trials in Zimbabwe. He identified needs and opportunities to improve the media’s ongoing balanced, accurate, consistent and reliable reporting on HIV prevention trials in Zimbabwe. He provided training and resources to journalists, editors and community advisory board members.

In Their Own Words
It should be understood by all that it is the burden of the disease that has overwhelmed our continent, and it is only when we find new and better tools—including a vaccine—that women and men can use to protect themselves from HIV, only then would we truly have cause for celebration.

Nomfundo Eland

Nono is currently focused on adolescent girls and young women’s programming, women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and HIV prevention research. She has extensive experience advocating for SRHR, health care and against gender-based violence. Nono is raising her son and nephews to respect women and to see violence of any kind as a crime. She is also a strong advocate for affordable interventions for women in developing countries, including access to HPV vaccines and different HIV prevention options. She was the National Coordinator for the Women’s Rights Campaign at the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) in South Africa.

Fellowship Focus
Nono brought her extensive community organizing experience to community engagement in key prevention topics, including male circumcision, PrEP, clinical trials conduct, microbicides and other issues. Her project reenergized advocacy around HIV prevention in a feminized epidemic in South Africa and engaged national stakeholders around HIV prevention research.

In Their Own Words
Biomedical prevention research is complex. It includes many scientific and research terms that are hard for the general public to understand. Finding ways to effectively communicate what research is being done and what the results mean needs to be a big part of HIV prevention efforts.

Richard Hasunira

Richard wears many hats: he is an economist, policy analyst, journalist, a passionate HIV/AIDS advocate, and before the Fellowship he was Communication Manager at HEPS-Uganda, a health rights advocacy civil society organization. At the time of his Fellowship project, he had been team leader of policy advocacy research studies for the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition (ITPC) and the Regional Network for Equity in Health in East and Southern Africa (EQUINET). Richard’s advocacy work for HIV prevention research started in 2007, when he was part of a media and advocacy mapping study for new prevention research in Uganda. He is keen on biomedical research into microbicides because of the hope they offer to women, who remain vulnerable to and are disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS.

Fellowship Focus
Richard analyzed the community engagement mechanisms of the MDP 301 and MTN 003 (VOICE) studies as case studies in documenting community experiences, perceptions and lessons learned in order to contribute to a better understanding of the effects of the closure of HIV prevention clinical trials on communities, to identify best practices that should be emulated in future trials and to highlight areas that need improvement and advocacy. Richard also contributed to a better understanding and appreciation of biomedical HIV prevention research and advocacy within trial communities and the broader community of civil society at the national level in Uganda.

In Their Own Words
Have we not been over-excited by the possibility of an ARV-based prevention option, so much so that we seem to have “put all our eggs in one basket”? Doesn’t an AIDS vaccine–even a modestly effective one–still have a place in the HIV prevention puzzle?

Victor Lakay

Victor is a community activist with a strong desire to build a society that offers a better and just life for all. At the time of his Fellowship project, he was a member of the Lesbian and Gay Equality Project (formerly the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality), an organization that challenged discriminatory provisions that governed South Africa and won equal rights for LGTBI persons. He was also a member of the Alternative Information & Development Center (AIDC), an organization contributing to the development of alternatives to the challenges of the currently dominant global economic system. As a student, he actively participated in the fight against apartheid, something in which he takes great pride. He has previously worked as a consultant for the Parliamentary Monitoring Group, the Equality Project and the South African National AIDS Council.

Fellowship Focus
Victor brought extensive community organizing experience to projects related to prevention research advocacy. His project focused on male circumcision, microbicides, and PrEP. He effectively advocated for the rights of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) and their right to access a comprehensive prevention package of care. He also worked to develop leaders among PLWHA and women within the Treatment Action Committee who advocated for the right to access quality social services, treatment and prevention. Additionally, he worked toward improving science-based knowledge on health, health rights and policy literacy through research, and toward strengthening advocacy and leadership at the local, district and provincial levels in South Africa.

In Their Own Words
I’m learning all the time. And I’m not learning only from my mentors but also from those who have elected me to this role of leadership because I constantly have to figure out, “What is it that is expected of me as a leader? And how do I deliver on that?”.

Margaret Cynthia Mungofa

Cynthia is a gender, HIV/AIDS and development specialist with extensive experience working at the community level with diverse groups in Zimbabwe, including sex workers and marginalized women such as widows and adolescent girls and young women towards their equitable access to sexual reproductive health and rights. She’s currently a program manager for Zimbabwe Rural Women Empowerment Trust (ZRWET) and previously worked at the Zimbabwe Women Against HIV/AIDS, Poverty and Violence (ZWAAPV). She is a writer and a singer-songwriter with a keen interest in the Afro-jazz musical genre.

Fellowship Focus
Cynthia sensitized high risk groups and marginalized women on microbicides and other viable HIV prevention options. She initiated dialogue about microbicides in order to empower women in rural areas like Murewa, where her project was based. Cynthia believes that we should strengthen advocacy around the need to expand HIV prevention tools controlled by women. Her Fellowship primarily focused on exploring what rural women know about these options and specifically microbicides, and empowering them by initiating dialogue around these strategies.

In Their Own Words
Women in developing countries, Zimbabwe included, are constrained by cultural barriers and therefore cannot initiate or decide on prevention methods to use. Therefore, interventions like microbicides are important for these women since they not only provide another safe option that they can control but also help to address strong cultural barriers that constrain women and limit access.

Patrick Muchai

Patrick has been involved in HIV prevention programs in Kenya for the past fifteen years and is passionate about working with communities to understand their sexual and reproductive health and rights. Patrick has served as the Chairperson of the Kenya Medical Research Institute-University of Washington Community Advisory Board (CAB) in Coast Province and coordinated the Coast Vaccine Support Network in Kenya, which enabled him to link research institutions to the community by repackaging information on HIV vaccines in an accessible language.

Fellowship Focus
Patrick developed a culturally-appropriate HIV prevention research training curriculum regarding participation in clinical trials of microbicides, PrEP and HIV vaccines for community members, with a specific focus on key populations in Kenya such as MSM and sex workers. He also built the capacity of Community Advisory Board members to work with the media to ensure that their perspectives are accurately represented.

In Their Own Words
When research communities are meaningfully engaged, they are empowered to participate and provide feedback to the research teams and, in the process, it creates an enabling environment for research conduct.

Jauhara Nanyondo

Jauhara has worked in the public health field for more than fifteen years, with a specific focus on biomedical prevention research. She has recently joined IAVI as the Associate Director for community engagement, and she spent the past decade at Makerere University Walter Reed Project (MUWRP), where she led their community outreach efforts.

Fellowship Focus
Jauhara developed an HIV prevention research training guide for the media in Uganda to help streamline content and scope. Her training guide filled an important gap, since at the time of her Fellowship—although there had been efforts to build media capacity to report effectively on new HIV prevention research—the content and scope of such workshops was limited.

In Their Own Words
Although we haven’t developed a safe and effective vaccine yet, we have come a long way in the past decade regarding HIV prevention and treatment options, with PrEP now available in many countries and microbicides possibly on the horizon. We’ve also had many breakthrough advances in vaccine research–including the RV144 result–that give us hope. We must keep at it, and every stakeholder must play their part.

Alliance Nikuze

Alliance has been directly impacted by HIV/AIDS, having lost family members to AIDS-related complications. Although her primary advocacy has centered on female empowerment and prevention options to prevent penile-vaginal transmission, over the past decade she has become increasingly interested in the need for rectal microbicides, as well. Alliance believes that the continuous commitment of government, organizations and individuals supports the slowing of the pandemic. Her interest in HIV biomedical prevention interventions is grounded in their potential to empower women.

Fellowship Focus
Alliance mobilized civil society groups to inform and influence the rollout of voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) for HIV prevention in Rwanda. She explored issues of VMMC acceptability and involvement of partners in health, both crucial issues for the successful implementation of this strategy.

In Their Own Words
We are more than seven billion people on this planet; we surely don’t and can’t have one way of having sexual intercourse. Our diversity is our wealth. Our sexuality as human beings is not supposed to be defined by the available prevention tools, but all the HIV prevention tools have to be adapted to our sexuality.

Gift Trapence

Gift is a human rights defender. He is the director of the Centre for the Development of People (CEDEP) and the chairperson of Human Rights Defenders Coalition in Malawi. He has worked extensively on issues of sexual health concerning men who have sex with men (MSM) since 2005. He contributed to the pioneering of the first HIV sero-prevalence study among the MSM community in Malawi.

Fellowship Focus
Gift explored knowledge, attitudes, perceptions and willingness of African MSM towards circumcision as an HIV prevention strategy in Malawi. Using the information gathered from these discussions, he developed communication materials that provided adequate information to MSM on voluntary medical male circumcision for HIV prevention and helped to guide engagement with researchers and policy makers on implementing such studies for the benefit of African MSM and on HIV prevention research broadly.

In Their Own Words
We must fight to ensure that vulnerable populations have access to HIV and other health-related services. I’m invested in protecting every citizen’s human rights and will not rest until that is achieved.

Gift’s Media Advocacy: