Beatrice Were. Photograph: author's own
Ten years ago, Beatrice Were was one of the first Ugandans to publicly declare themselves HIV positive. Since then she has defended the rights of people living with Aids. She is attending the UN Aids summit in New York.
This week, there's a crucial meeting at the United Nations in which governments must commit to actions to make the target of universal access to HIV treatment by 2010, a reality. Without this, people will continue to die and crucial targets that were set by the G8 and the UN world summit last year will be laid to waste.
For example, US Aids funding sounds impressive - $15bn over five years. But its approach of restricting condom distribution to so-called high risk groups such as commercial sex workers and truck drivers ignores the reality of the African epidemic, which is young and female.
It assumes young African women possess a level of control over their lives and sexuality that they do not have.
At last year's G8 summit, the world's richest countries pledged to provide the resources and funding needed to deliver universal access to HIV and Aids treatment, prevention and care by 2010. Currently only one in five people in the world living with HIV, like me, are receiving treatment. Most of these men, women and children live in the developed world. Sadly, it looks like the political will to make the G8 pledges happen has disappeared.
Most of the time I am not sick, I am not threatened by any opportunistic diseases. I can get along with my daily business. I work very hard, like any other person. I am not worried about death for a moment. The treatment has enabled me to plan for my life, plan for my children and look at life from a different perspective.
Once you start treatment, it must not be interrupted. There are programmes that treat people and then stop, and many others struggle to buy medication. This interruption means these people are likely to become resistant to any other treatment they might need. It also means it's going to become more complicated and expensive to treat a resistant strain of the virus.
For most of Africa, we are not able to treat resistance yet. In Uganda for example, we don't have machines or equipment that can track or check for resistance. So we face a situation where, if you have started treatment and it's not consistent or sustained, it's causing more problems and it becomes an even bigger public health issue.
Anti-retroviral treatment is very important to people living with HIV. I have been on treatment since 1998 and during that time I can't tell you the benefits I have had. As a mother, the treatment has brought hope to my children because I have lived for them and I have managed to raise them.
Unfortunately, far too many people have no access to the medicine, doctors and clinics they need to survive.
We need to make access to treatment fair and universal - it is about justice and human rights and we need to lobby for those rights, today.
Beatrice Were is national coordinator for HIV and Aids for ActionAid Uganda
