Reporting from Ethiopia - Susan Kramer writes...

11.39.30am UTC (GMT +0000) Mon 11th Aug 2008

I write this column from Ethiopia, one of the poorest countries in Africa, where I am working for 2 weeks with VSO and a women's HIV/AIDS network.

The country is fascinating, and working here puts the daily luxuries of life at home in perspective. Last night I joined local people on a food run to distribute a meal and water to people living on the streets. It is cold and soaking as this is the rainy season.

Thanks to international funding and serious commitment by the Government to the poor (though not to democracy), anti-retroviral drugs to enable people to live with AIDS are free. But outside the big cities, the medical distribution facilities are really limited so increasing commitment by Britain, the US and others to supporting health systems is vital.

But the group I am with is convinced that HIV/AIDS, which here as in much of Africa is a disease that affects women far more than men, can only be truly combatted by changing the status of women. Early marriage to older men, forced marriage including abduction, female genital mutilation, rape including within marriage are widely experienced. HIV+ women, who no longer receive food support once they are responding to drugs, have few means to earn money to live on or feed their families in a society rife with poverty and discrimination. Yet the active campaigning to change all this is at risk from proposed new laws that would end international funding for such advocacy.

In the eyes of many local people, international support is vital to give them the chance to create a future of hope. We must not let them down.