Josephine Nabukenya

Josephine Nabukenya is a Ugandan HIV/AIDS activist who is also living with HIV/AIDS. She is an ambassador at Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF)'s Ariel Club. She is one of the young leaders who grew from being timid to a resilient and powerful young leader who encourages other children to live positively and take their pills.

Background life Josephine Nabukenya was born in 1993 in Kampala. Her mother was HIV positive and passed the condition on to her daughters. Nabukenya only learnt of this in 2001, at age eight, when her mother, terminally ill from HIV complications, wrote a last will, reasoning that she had kept it a secret because HIV treatment would never be available to her children. Nabukenya ultimately survived, due to emergency antiretroviral therapy at Makerere University. She, her mother, father, and younger sister all have HIV; both Josephine and her sister became infected at birth.

She started Young General Alive (YGA), an organisation that initially constituted Lubega, another mother and her child, and another patient they had met at Mulago hospital during a visit. In 2005, Makerere University - Johns Hopkins University Research Collaboration (Mujhu) helped them to formalise their group.

Education Nabukenya is a degree holder in Social Work from Makerere University in Kampala.

Career life In 2005, under EGPAF, Nabukenya represented children both infected and affected by HIV/aids in the US Congress.