“LIKE ALL WOMEN, I HAVE DREAMS”
A Young Woman’s Struggle to Deal with AIDS

Washington,D.C., December 1, 2004 (PAHO)—Today is World AIDS Day and one courageous young woman from Bolivia reminds us that living with HIV does not end one’s dreams nor the desire to help others protect themselves from AIDS.

“Like all women, I have dreams. For myself, for my country, for a better world. I also have HIV,” says Gracia Violeta Ross Quiroga in one of two 30-second public service announcements produced by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO).

Having HIV, she adds in the PSA entitled I Have Dreams “doesn’t stop me from dreaming… or from helping other women and girls learn how to protect themselves from AIDS. I know I will live with HIV my whole life. But I also know my dreams will live even longer than I do.”

Violeta is a 27-year old Bolivian woman. Since 2000, the year in which she discovered that she was HIV+, she has been an advocate for the human rights of people living with HIV, especially women in Bolivia and the rest of Latin America.

In the second PSA, called My Name Is Violeta, she reminds her audience that many know women like her. “I enjoy life. I love my family, my books and my pet. I love to travel, but I always have to remember to take my medicine, because I have HIV,” she says.

“I also have a strong desire to make sure that every woman and girl has the information and the means to protect herself from AIDS. Together, I believe we can do it.”

Violeta serves as a representative of the International Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS (ICW) for the Andean sub region and is a member of the Latin American Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS (REDLA).

Violeta became known worldwide after she delivered one of the speeches at the closing ceremony of the International AIDS Conference in Bangkok, Thailand, in July 2004.

The Pan American Health Organization, the World Health Organization (WHO) and its partners are working in countries to rapidly scale up HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention services to achieve the global "3 by 5" target which seeks to treat 3 million people living with HIV/AIDS in developing countries by the end of 2005.

The countries in the Americas today are leading the developing world in providing treatment for HIV, as part of the WHO’s "3 by 5". In line with that goal, the leaders of the region made the commitment at the Nuevo Leon summit to treat 600,000 people living with HIV by the next Summit of the Americas in Argentina in November 2005.

As part of World AIDS Day, several hundred people, including PAHO officials, joined in forming a Human Red Ribbon on a Washington, D.C., street near PAHO’s headquarters in the U.S. capital.