Catherine Madebe

Updated January 2024

Catherine works at the intersection of adolescent girls and young women and sexual and reproductive health. She co-leads the AGWY Forum, founded with 2018 Fellow Alumni Lilian Benjamin Mwakyosi, and is a leading member of the Tanzania HIV Prevention Coalition. Catherine was named SRHR Best Celebrity in Eastern and Southern Africa for her outstanding performance by the Southern African AIDS Trust.

Impact

Catherine cofounded Tanzania’s AGYW Forum, the leading national level advocacy network for HIV prevention of young women. She also won increased funding for AGYW through her direct involvement in the Global Fund and PEPFAR processes.

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Josephine Chinele

Josephine is multi-award winning journalist. She has been in the profession for 13 years and has done numerous health journalism fellowships, specializing in HIV/AIDS, general health and human rights. Josephine has also traveled extensively in pursuit of various journalism trainings and fellowships. Notably in 2018, she was selected to train in HIV science reporting and covered the International AIDS Conference held in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Why I Want to Advocate for HIV Prevention in 2019, and what I Plan To Do
My advocacy started from my work as a journalist pursuing investigative reporting and feature writing with a strong advocacy voice. This work exposed key policy issues such as the need for young women to access PrEP. In 2019, I will take aim to influence the Malawi government so that policies elevate adolescent girls and young women as a priority population for PrEP rollout. Specifically, I will advocate for an enabling environment for PrEP introduction, accurate and effective media coverage of HIV prevention, community engagement around ongoing research in Malawi and preparation for the potential introduction of the dapivirine ring.

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Sarah Nabia

Sarah is currently pursuing an MPH/MBA dual degree student at Bloomberg School of Public Health and Carey Business School, Johns Hopkins University. She has worked among female sex workers, men who have sex with men and transgender persons across Southern Karnataka in India. Her work has focused on advocating for the inclusion of PrEP as part of combination prevention in the national HIV prevention policy. Sarah has also implemented a community-led approach to battling tuberculosis.

Fellowship Focus
While PrEP has been well received in India’s demonstration studies, it has also cultivated a groundswell of demand among the sex worker community at large. Sarah built political and community support for broader PrEP rollout. She mobilized stakeholders and directly participated in the development of India’s draft PrEP policy and guidelines, helping to ensure that they were inclusive of sex workers’ needs. She trained leading sex worker advocates in five states to pressure their State AIDS Control Societies for PrEP rollout and sensitized national media to report on the need for PrEP.

In Their Own Words
Map your field–allies, obstructures and the indifferent. Know their strengths and weaknesses. Every person can be a useful contributor in your efforts. There are no permanent friends or foes in advocacy.

Esnart Sikazindu

Esnart’s advocacy for differentiated PrEP services played out through social and traditional media. As Zambia moved PrEP out of ART clinics into more youth-friendly spaces, she saw an unfulfilled need to let young women know about PrEP and where to find it. Thus, she spread the word and built demand via social media.

She also took to the airwaves and print to let the general public know about PrEP as well as forthcoming HIV prevention like the PrEP ring and injectable. And not least, Esnart drafted a policy brief Too Little for Far Too Long: A Gap Analysis for Adolescent Girls and Young Women, which continues to be employed as an advocacy tool today.

End of Project Summary Video

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Chisomo Chaweza

As a KP ally, Chisomo strategically selected MANERELA+, a network of religious leaders, to host him through his Fellow project. This reflects Chisomo’s big-tent approach to advocacy, tapping into all the key sectors to push for accelerated PrEP rollout in key populations. Specifically, he rallied demand for the release of the long-overdue PrEP Guidelines—finally launched in September, 2021.

And when the MOH was not forthcoming with where to find PrEP dispensing sites, Chisomo rallied pressure on PEPFAR to reveal this information. He handled the media as an advocacy tool from both sides—engaging them to consistently and accurately cover HIV prevention and also developing his own blog, Liberty, and writing opinion pieces. He drafted a policy brief Making up for Lost Time: Increasing Access to PrEP and HIV Self-testing for Key Populations in Malawi, which continues to be employed as an advocacy tool today by others such as the incoming 2022 Fellow.

End of Project Summary Video

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Liyema Somnono

Updated January 2024

Liyema is a gender and human rights activist. She is currently employed as a paralegal at SWEAT (Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Task Force) and is a member of the drafting team for the national legislation to decriminalize sex work. Liyema is a member of the Eastern Cape AIDS Council Women’s Sector and serves on the Young Women’s HIV Prevention Council.

Impact

Liyema was a national leader in mobilizing testimonials for public comment in favor of South Africa’s sex worker decriminalization bill (which has been put on hold for now). She also initiated community-led monitoring, highlighting the struggles of young women in rural Eastern Cape to access HIV prevention and family planning services.

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Outreach

Natasha Mwila

Updated January 2024

Natasha is the Advocacy, Information and Research Officer at The Network of Zambian People Living with HIV/AIDS. She is actively involved in advocacy and preparedness for the injectable PrEP and the PrEP vaginal ring.

Impact

Natasha successfully pressured Zambia to approve the dapivirine vaginal ring and CAB for PrEP, using both traditional and social media. She helped shape her country’s HIV Prevention Roadmap and guidelines for injectable PrEP. She also led Zambia’s PEPFAR COP process and was on the Global Fund writing team, ensuring allocations for HIV prevention.

Read about some of Natasha’s latest work in our CASPR Results Bulletin (October 2023).

Media

Advocacy

John Mutsambi

John is the technical lead on HIV and specifically PrEP, at TBHIV Care. He’s involved in preparing new sites for the introduction of PrEP among adolescent girls and young women and preparing advocacy training for PrEP champions at PrEP implementation sites. He is a community engagement specialist whose experience spans 25 years. He has worked cross-culturally, advocating for the active engagement of communities in HIV prevention research and implementation and has developed and managed community engagement programs at clinical trial sites in six countries in eastern and southern Africa.

Fellowship Focus
John pushed for extended PrEP guidelines that include all people at substantial risk of HIV infection in South Africa and for increased access to PrEP. He also worked with PrEP advocates, civil society and clinical trialists to prepare for the results of the microbicide vaginal ring trials, ASPIRE and the Ring Study. His advocacy influenced the Medicines Control Council’s approval of the use of Truvada for PrEP in November 2015. In addition, he was directly involved in the development of the national oral PrEP and test and treat guidelines and accompanying policy. He also did extensive preparatory work in anticipation of the possible rollout of the dapivirine vaginal ring.

In Their Own Words
There’s a need in South Africa for PrEP awareness among individuals and institutions with decision-making authority, and particularly for key populations.

My Work as a Fellow

  • Petition for approval of PrEP: This petition, calling the South African Medicines Control Council to approve PrEP for all individuals at substantial risk of HIV in South Africa, was developed and led by John Mutsambi and other civil society advocates in South Africa.
  • Blog post: John published the blog “In Their Own Voices: South Africans at high risk of HIV Infection demand access to PrEP” on AVAC’s P-Values Blog, in which he amplified the increasing voices demanding for PrEP in South Africa. He also mapped steps to get there.
  • Give us ARVs so we don’t get HIV: This is an op-ed authored by John Mutsambi together with South African advocates in the Mail & Guardian in November 2015 calling on the South Africa government to make the bold step of rolling out PrEP among specific population groups that are substantial risk of HIV acquisition—such as young women and girls, sex workers, gay men and other men who have sex with men (MSM), discordant couples, truckers and people who inject drugs.
  • PrEP FAQ: John developed this PrEP frequently asked questions document to be a living tool to document and help answer questions about PrEP that he heard throughout his engagements with communities.
  • Project poster: This poster is a single-page summary of John’s project that he presented at the end of his Fellowship.
  • Advocates statement on dapivirine ring results: This is a response by South African civil society, including John, to the microbicides dapivirine ring results that were released at CROI 2016.
  • Fellowship summary report: “An enriching immersion into HIV prevention advocacy” is a summary of John’s experience and activities during the Fellowship.

Kingsley Seth Chasanga

Kingsley is a social development specialist with 12 years of work experience in HIV and AIDS planning, management, monitoring and evaluation, and advocacy. At MANASO he was responsible for advocacy to improve access to quality HIV and AIDS services at the national and community levels. He is also a member of the Community Advisory Board of the University of North Carolina project, which leads AIDS vaccine research in Malawi. He has just completed his Master of Public Administration: International Development with University of York (UK) and holds a bachelor’s degree in Education Humanities, specialising in planning, rural development and teaching from the University of Malawi-Chancellor College.

Why I want to advocate for HIV prevention in 2016?
Malawi needs a well-informed civil society, both organisations and individuals including discordant couples and young people, to lobby for and demand the availability of PrEP from decision makers and service providers.

Amaka Enemo

Amaka is a sex worker and HIV activist, as Coordinator of the Nigeria Sex Workers Association and co-chair of Key Affected Populations in Nigeria. She is active in her country’s Global Fund process, where she helped to draft its Concept Note. She has a degree in political science from Delta State University, Abraka.

Why I want to advocate for HIV prevention in 2016:
Being a part of the sex worker community, I notice that most of the members are HIV positive. I really want something to reduce the spread of HIV. PrEP and microbicides, as part of the prevention package, could do a whole lot of good for my community considering the risk associated with our work.