Pair share top Aids award

Aids activists Floba Thobela and Anne Leon are the joint winners of the first Leadership in Aids Award.

Thobela and Leon, who have both been living with HIV for more than a decade, were honoured at the recent SA Aids Conference in Durban for their contribution to fighting the stigma and the difference they have made to their communities.

Said Thobela: "The message I want to give to people who are HIV positive is that it is not the end of the world. I have been on ART for 10 years. The biggest challenge that we, as parents or adults, have when it comes to children in our care who are HIV positive is to make sure that they take their medicine every day and we monitor their treatment."

Thobela is a counsellor of the Tutu Tester mobile unit and has led the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation counselling services.

Leon has worked as a counsellor and has spoken out about having HIV . As a married middle-class white woman, she said she disproved the false stereotype that HIV only infects "gay people, black people and women of ill repute".

It is not the first time Leon has been honoured. She was named an HIV hero by the SA Aids Consortium and also O Magazine last year.