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SURF Announces £4.25 million grant from DFID
London – 2nd February 2005
The Rwandan Survivors Fund (SURF) is pleased to announce that together with PACFA (Prevention and Care for Families Against AIDS) has been awarded a grant of £4.25 million to help 2500 women survivors of the Rwandan genocide raped and deliberately infected with HIV/AIDS access antiretroviral treatment (ART).
This grant, the first awarded by the Department for International Development (DFID) to SURF, will enable the charity to offer family based care including ART & comprehensive care services to 2500 HIV+ women genocide survivors and their families. This will be achieved by enhancing the capacity of 4 local health clinics offering HIV/AIDS and their outreach services, already established. It will have a massive impact on the lives of not only the women helped, but on the lives of their many dependents – in particular their children, and the orphans they often care for. It will also give hope to other women living with HIV and will encourage further testing and prevention activity. At present only 99 women survivors have access to ART, 23 of them as a result of private funding by SURF.
The grant is the culmination of SURF’s Ten Years On campaign that was launched in April in the presence of Hilary Benn MP, Secretary of State for International Development, and the First Lady of Rwanda, Mrs Jeanette Kagame, who set up PACFA. The campaign, that has included an all-day Reading of the Testimonies of survivors in Trafalgar Square and the submission of a public petition to Downing Street, has been focused on raising awareness of the plight of women raped and infected with HIV/AIDS during the Rwandan genocide and to lobby governments and pharmaceutical companies worldwide to do more to help this particularly vulnerable group.
Announcing the grant, Director of SURF, Mary Kayitesi-Blewitt, said:
“DFID’s grant is a massive boost to our campaign to secure access to antiretroviral treatment for the 25,000 women survivors, raped and infected with HIV during the genocide in Rwanda. The money will enable us to give life to 2,500 women and to give hope to thousands more. The real challenge now is to engage more governments to add to DFID’s funding, to enable SURF to help even more women survivors in Rwanda.”
A spokesperson from the Department for International Development said:
“DFID is proud to be able to support SURF and PACFA with a £4.25 million grant to fund this vital five-year project to provide comprehensive support, care and treatment to 2500 women, and girls, who were raped and infected with HIV/AIDS, in the Rwandan genocide of 1994. SURF and PACFA both have an established track record of delivering HIV/AIDS projects in the field and are already working together to create the space and capacity for a programme of this unprecedented scale. ” She added: “Ten years on from the genocide, we hope others will now contribute to SURF's campaign to help the thousands more women survivors still needing access to treatment.”
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