News

Dr Lydia Mungherera is a medical doctor, living positively with HIV. She has been a peer educator since 1998, a member of the Ugandan national network of people living with HIV and the International Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS since 2002. She is a treatment, gender and human rights activist for HIV positive women. She is passionate about the sexual and reproductive health rights of mothers living with HIV.

She founded the Mama’s Club Uganda in 2004, addressing psychosocial needs and reproductive heath rights of rural mothers living with HIV. The organization, which was a winner of a Red Ribbon award in the International Aids Conference in  Mexico 2008, has brought together grassroot networks of  positive mother peer mentors  in 22 Districts of Uganda. It is a major player in Uganda’s Maternal Health Coalition, and has joined the Sexual Reproductive Health Alliance promoting sexual and reproductive health rights and reduction of violence against young mothers. Lydia also worked with The AIDS Support Organization (TASO) Uganda for 12 years as clinician, advocate and policy maker.

Lydia has served on many boards both globally and locally representing concerns of women living with HIV, including their sexual and reproductive rights. She is a former global co-chair of Learning Group three, a 2 year research project, of the Joint Learning Initiative on Children and HIV/AIDS. As part of this program, she took part in developing the PMTCT Learning Collaborative in Rwanda . She was a member of the NGO Delegation of UNAIDS programme coordinating board and a member of technical working groups that developed the UNAIDS Agenda for Women and Girls. 

Lydia is a co-founder of the Athena Network and more recently co–founder of the Pan-African Coalition of Women Living with HIV/AIDS. Lydia has been engaged in developing and revising HIV counselling, prevention and treatment guidelines with UNAIDS and  WHO Geneva as civil society representative since 2003. She was a member of 3 by 5 evaluation team, and is currently a peer reviewer of 2013 ARV treatment guidelines. She is a member of the Men Engage Alliance, founding peer father groups to  curb gender based violence amongst couples while promoting a family based approach to PMTCT.

In Uganda, she is a member of  the  National Maternal Child Health Cluster and Uganda’s  PMTCT National Advisory Committee developing the Uganda PMTCT scale up plan and more recently, the National Task Force of the Option B+ implementation in Uganda. She is a member of the Ugandan Health Policy Advisory Committee.