Banking on AIDS awareness

Standard Chartered declared June 24 as its AIDS day recently where employees held HIV/AIDS-related programmes worldwide. Ugandan Theopista Ntale Sekitto was here as an HIV champion to share her touching story as someone greatly affected by the disease, writes WONG LI ZA. 

FOR Ugandan Theopista Ntale Sekitto, the battle with HIV/AIDS has been vicious and heartbreaking.  

The debilitating virus has stripped her of seven immediate family members from 1986 to just last December, including her father in 1990. 

Now, she only has her elder sister Madina, 38, who was HIV+ since 1988. Madina, a nurse, contracted the disease at work.  

“I call her three times a day when I am here to see how she is. HIV+ persons sometimes develop a fever in the evenings,” said Sekitto with a tinge of sadness. 

Sekitto or Theo, as she is known among her colleagues, is a business financial services staff with Standard Chartered Bank Uganda.  

She was invited by Standard Chartered Bank Malaysia (SCB-MY) to come here to share her personal experience as an HIV/AIDS caregiver and counsellor in conjunction with Standard Chartered’s launch of it’s AIDS day on June 24 recently at the Lot 10 branch.  

“I only have one sister and I share a lot with her. From that, I know that it is very important to create time for an HIV+ person. There’s also a need for us to make them feel that it’s not the end,” said the 35-year-old mother of four. 

Besides her own children, aged between four months and 14, Sekitto has also opened her heart and home to eight orphans whose parents have all died of AIDS. Four of these adopted children are HIV+. 

“My eldest adopted child, Edward, is now 24. He is in university taking an education course. He will graduate soon and I am so proud of him.  

“He is HIV-. I found him at a church where he used to eat with the pigs reared at the back of the building,” shared Sekitto, adding that her youngest adopted child is nine and is HIV+. 

Back home, Sekitto spends 20 hours a month on her charity work. Every Saturday afternoon, she visits HIV+ patients in hospitals in Kampala. She also visits poor HIV+ persons in their homes around Kampala, very often buying them food. 

Her work is taxing both financially and psychologically. 

“It is very emotional to care for someone whom you know will die,” said Sekitto as her voice trails off. 

Many people have also asked her how she manages financially.  

Sekitto said matter-of-factly that 90% of her salary goes to such voluntary work including her year-end bonus.  

“It is difficult sometimes, balancing the money between my charity work and also all my children. I send one of my adopted children to a cheaper school because she is quite sickly and can only go to school sometimes two days in a week,” she said.  

As one of the Bank’s HIV champions, Sekitto’s role was also to spread awareness on the disease. 

“My main focus is I want people to know that HIV is not transmitted through touch, sitting side by side or eating from the same plate. This fear is very bad and makes HIV+ people feel rejected. Our role is to bridge the gap between the HIV+ and those who are not,” she stressed. 

Sekitto said SCB Uganda has lost some employees to AIDS. 

“Many staff members are supporting the children left behind by family members and relatives who have died of AIDS. I can say that 95% of the staff are doing that,” said Sekitto, adding that her husband lost four sisters and three brothers to AIDS and he was also supporting their children.  

Sekitto said her bank encouraged HIV screening for employees’ spouse and children and if they were sick, the bank would pay for their drugs.  

(However, beginning June 9, 2004 all HIV+ persons in Uganda could obtain HIV drugs for free.)  

According to the United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), every single family in Uganda has lost at least one family member to AIDS. 

There are an estimated 1.4 million people living with HIV and 120,000 living with full-blown AIDS in Uganda. (The total population of Uganda is estimated at around 25 million). Over 700,000 people or more are believed to have died of AIDS in the country.  

Uganda was worse hit in the 80s until the government took a very firm stand against HIV/AIDS in 1992, targeting those aged 16 to 45, a group whi ch is sexually active and forms a majority of the workforce. 

The Ugandan government’s openness policy and focus on early action and education have effectively reduced the prevalence rate of the disease from over 30% in the 80s to the current six per cent. 

In recognition of their successful fight against HIV/AIDS, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and his wife Janet were given the Hero Award 2004 by the United States Medical Institute for Sexual Health in June recently. 

Uganda’s ABC (Abstinence, Be faithful in marriage and use Condoms) strategy also formed the basis for the US National Policy on HIV/AIDS. 

“Uganda is the first country to become open about HIV,” said Sekitto. 

“We have live talk shows on radio where people call in to ask questions on HIV/AIDS. You'll be surprised that people still call in to ask if raping a virgin will cure HIV+ persons,” she said. 

Sekitto said many couples in Africa do not tell each other that they are HIV+ for fear of social stigma, abuse or rejection. 

“The husband may go to the clinic to take some medicine and one hour later, the wife will come and do the same, but the clinic cannot tell them about this.  

“The couples then go ahead to conceive and breastfeed, and that's how the virus spreads,” said Sekitto. 

Acting CEO of SCB-MY Bridget Lai, who is the bank's HIV ambassador, said that SCB wanted to actively promote HIV/AIDS awareness and education. 

“We are the oldest bank in Malaysia. We want to display the value of courage to talk about something people still do not talk much about,” she said. 

“By bringing in Theo, we want her to communicate to us first hand how (HIV/AIDS) can happen to us,” said Lai.  

She added that the bank would also review all its human resource policies to ensure that they support this cause. 

“We hope to set a benchmark in terms of having such policies.”  

Standard Chartered developed its group HIV/AIDS policy in 1999.  

In 2000, it launched its “Staying Alive” campaign in Africa, which focused primarily on staff education. In the same year, the bank received the Edelman Health AIDS and Employment Award from the European Union AIDS Enterprise Network.  

In November 2001, the bank received an award from the Commonwealth for outstanding work on advocacy and education regarding HIV and AIDS.  

Standard Chartered is also one of the original members of the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS. 

In 2002, Standard Chartered introduced a peer education programme for all its 28,000 staff in over 50 countries through the “Living with HIV” campaign, which focused on the message of hope for all staff, whether infected or affected. 

This programme won the Global Business Coalition Award on HIV/AIDS for Business Excellence in the Workplace for 2003. 

In conjunction with the bank’s AIDS day, Standard Chartered Bank Malaysia’s 30 branches will display reading materials on HIV/AIDS for a month beginning June 24. 

Seven main branches in the country also displayed exhibition panels with information on the issue. The bank will also raise funds for HIV/AIDS children in Uganda. 

SCB-MY also presented a certificate of recognition to employee Chiew Sin Mun for his commitment to developing information and conducting peer education programmes on HIV/AIDS.  

This year, SCB-MY will extend these peer programmes to other companies, organisations and young adults in universities, the latter through the “SCB-AIESEC HIV Learning Network” (see accompanying story). 

According to Lai, to date, SCB-MY has trained its entire staff in the peer education programme and spent close to RM250,000 on external charities. 

In SCB-MY’s 2003 “My Belief Fund”, the bank matched funds raised by employees in several fund-raising activities and collected over RM300,000 for community HIV/AIDS-related programmes, including support for the Malaysian AIDS Foundation (MAF) and Malaysian AIDS Council (MAC).  

“This is a war we need to fight together and win for the sake of our children and the future generation,” said Lai. 

Sekitto urged the Malaysian Government to step in and use all its avenues to design policies to prevent HIV/AIDS and help the people affected by it. 

“At the end of the day, it is the nation’s responsibility because the disease affects the economy and the workforce. Let’s not wait till we reach the stage of what’s happening in Uganda and other African countries,” she said.