In 1991 my husband Francis died of Aids. Four months later I was diagnosed with HIV and my life changed for ever. Francis knew he was positive but had not told me. Like most Ugandan men, he wanted a "pure" wife, and he got one, for all the good it did me.

I had abstained and remained faithful, but ultimately it was meaningless. And so I was left at 22, widowed with two baby daughters, and enveloped by a cloud of bitterness that took years to disperse.

My personal story is typical of the way most African women contract HIV. In Africa, 60% of new infections are in women, many of them are married.

Fifteen years on, I am a long term survivor. But I know that I am lucky. I have a university degree and a profession to fall back on. As a trained social worker I understand how systems work and have personal and professional support networks to back me. Anti-retroviral drugs supplied by my employer, ActionAid, keep me alive.

Unfortunately for many poor women AIDS still kills, while the prejudice and stigma that surrounds the disease is a life sentence. Africa has already lost a generation to Aids. Without action, it will lose another. HIV is a matter of life and death, not just for individuals, but for a continent.

It is also an issue of human rights. Aids is not just an illness of the body. It is an illness of society. On the journey from healthy family woman to HIV positive single mother, the obstacles are varied and hurtful. Like many women I had to fight a traditional widows' inheritance system where I was supposed to marry my husband’s youngest brother, and where my property was claimed by his family.

There was a time when Uganda was heralded for stemming and reversing the rise in its HIV infections. Now, the United Nation’s latest Aids figures show that this is no longer true. The response of the Ugandan Government has shifted from pragmatic to moralistic and, as UNAIDS showed last week, HIV prevalence in women has grown by 2% and in some rural hotspots by as much as 25%.

It wasn’t that long ago that the Ugandan approach was a classic 'ABC' model - abstinence, being faithful, using a condom. In my case, I settled for 'A' and 'B', which ultimately proved not enough. Yet the three step policy, while far from perfect, was at least realistic in promoting the use of condoms which used to be advertised all over Uganda on huge billboards.

Now, under the influence of US donors, often driven by the evangelical right, billboards have been replaced by marches of virgins, and proposals for university scholarships for those who remain 'untainted'. A new wave of stigma has overtaken the country; people who are living with HIV are defined as "loose". Civil society, the backbone of any approach to defeat AIDS, has become divided in the scramble for US grants.

America's Aids funding for Uganda is undoubtedly generous. It amounts to $15bn over five years. But its prevention approach, mainly restricting condom distribution to so-called "high risk" groups such as commercial sex workers and truck drivers, ignores the reality of the African epidemic, which is young and female

We know that girls and young women who stay in education are much less likely to contract the disease. They are more likely to reject patriarchal norms, and stand up for their rights, including their right not to have sex. They are less likely to have sex for money, and crucially they are more likely to use a condom when they do have sex.

Assuming it has taken you six minutes to read this, 72 people will have died from Aids around the world and 85 will become infected. The response from African governments and the international community must be injected with a dose of realism. G8 countries have promised to fund treatment for those who need it – but no plans are in place. When and if this funding reaches countries like Uganda, there needs to be a fundamental shift in attitudes toward sex and the rights of women, if we are ever to defeat this devastating pandemic.

Beatrice Were runs ActionAid’s HIV and AIDS programmes in Uganda, and is a world renowned AIDS activist.