Otjivero - Bonita Nakanyala is the head nurse at a small clinic in Otjivero, a village hemmed in by farmland about 150 kilometres east of Windhoek, the Namibian capital.

Rustenburg - Kevin Dowling is the Catholic Bishop of Rustenburg, a mining town in South Africa's North West Province surrounded by informal settlements, where as many as 50 percent of pregnant women test positive for HIV.

Johannesburg - Bev White, a business owner and mother of one, started a support group called Living Positively at Home for employers of HIV-positive domestic workers after her child's nanny, Thandi, was diagnosed positive three years ago.

Mbabane - Siphiwe Hlope is a pioneer. She was one of the first Swazi women to publicly declare her HIV status, in 2001, at a time when stigma against people living with the virus was intense.

Johannesburg - HIV among imprisoned juveniles, teenagers and the Muslim community headlined a discussion of community leaders and AIDS experts in Johannesburg recently.

Manzini - Hannie Thulasiwe Dlamini is approaching 40, a feat most people in Swaziland considered impossible when he became the first person in the country to publicly declare his HIV-positive status in 1995.