Marie-Josée Mbuzenakamwe, champion in the fight against AIDS
Marie-Josée Mbuzenakamwe has devoted her career as a doctor to caring for people with AIDS in Africa and works to put an end to this disease. She chairs the Fondation de France's “Gender and HIV” committee.
Marie-Josée was born in Burundi almost 60 years ago. She now lives in the Eure-et-Loir department of France, from where she continues to travel throughout Africa on consultancy and field assignments. Marie-Josée Mbuzenakamwe is a doctor. As a result of chance - due to her family origins - and necessity, she has devoted most of her professional career to HIV care. This experience made her the clear choice as the leader of Fondation de France’s Gender and HIV Committee, which she has chaired since 2021. Her parents were campaigners for Burundian independence and took on major responsibilities when this was achieved in the 1960s. As a nurse, her father became a pillar of the training system for school dropouts. Her mother was a teacher and ran the general secretariat of the Union des Femmes Burundaises women’s organisation.
Marie-Josée fought hard for women's rights. The eldest of 11 children, she began her medical training just as AIDS was making its first dramatic impact. At the hospital, she was confronted with the initial outbreaks of the epidemic. After graduating, she worked in one of Bujumbura's oldest hospitals, the Prince Louis Rwagasore Hospital, monitoring and treating an unknown disease that was wreaking havoc. In 1999, she joined and then coordinated the Burundi HIV+ support association, the ANSS, for seven years. In Djibouti, she then worked at the Secretariat for the Fight against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, where she was an international technical assistant. She remembers how heavy the load was: “It was emotionally difficult. There was no treatment yet, we were just accompanying people as they were dying”. In the Horn of Africa, where she spent nine years, she set up a project for sex workers and other vulnerable groups, who are marginalized in Muslim countries.
Since 2003, Marie-Josée Mbuzenakamwe has crossed paths with Fondation de France at scientific conferences and fund-raising campaigns such as Solidays and Sidaction. Marie-Josée Mbuzenakamwe joined the Gender and HIV Committee in 2018. Meetings are often held remotely as the members are frequently in the field, scattered across various continents. As well as analysing projects, the aim is also to shed light on the options that the programme could take as the pandemic evolves. In 2025, tFondation de France will refocus its activities in this area.
The mother of a daughter living in Strasbourg, Marie-Josée Mbuzenakamwe is now an active early retiree. She reads “French classics, Voltaire, La Boétie, but also the Goncourt prizewinner” and listens to jazz from the 50s and 60s, Miles Davis, Stan Getz. But if she is asked, she will willingly travel to Niger, Benin or elsewhere, ever-dedicated to her work.
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