1.7 Million Lives. One Province. Enough Is Enough

ActionSA Gauteng Women’s Forum marks World AIDS Day with a clarion call for urgent, women-centred action.

This World AIDS Day, the ActionSA Gauteng Women’s Forum refuses to look away from a crisis that continues to devastate families and futures.

In Gauteng alone, 1.7 million people are living with HIV – a figure larger than the entire population of several countries. The burden falls disproportionately on women: one in four women aged 25-49

is HiV-positive, compared to one in seven men.

These are not statistics. They are mothers raising children single-handedly. Daughters whose dreams are cut short. Sisters battling in silence.

HIV thrives where gender inequality and gender-based violence are left unchecked. It is fuelled by a health system that too often fails the very women it is meant to protect. The ActionSA Gauteng Women’s Forum will no longer accept another generation lost to a virus that is both preventable and treatable.

On this World AIDS Day, we draw a line in the sand and make an unbreakable commitment:

  • To champion women-centred healthcare that delivers testing, treatment, and prevention to every community and every home.
  • To integrate HIV awareness into every fight against gender-based violence and femicide – because no woman should have to fear both her partner and her status.
  • To hold government and all stakeholders accountable for reaching the UNAIDS 95-95-95
    targets – no excuses, no delays.
  • Through flagship initiatives My Sister’s Keeper and Heal to Lead, to transform survivors into leaders and pain into power.

This is not a request. This is a demand.

To every leader, every department, and every South African: the era of speeches is over. Deliver real access. Deliver real safety. Deliver real change.

Every woman in Gauteng deserves the right to live – not merely survive.

Together, we end this. Together, we rise.

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