Doctor Aster Shweaamare – Stories

ART Coordinator, Zewditu Memorial Hospital, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

March 26, 2026

For over twenty years, Dr. Aster Shweaamare has been one in all the driving forces in Ethiopia’s fight against HIV.

At Zewditu Memorial Hospital in Addis Ababa, one in all the biggest HIV treatment centers in Ethiopia, she leads the disease prevention team and helps oversee the care of greater than 7,000 patients. Up to 200 people visit the clinic on daily basis for examination, treatment and support.

Dr. Shweaamare witnessed Ethiopia’s most devastating HIV epidemic and the extraordinary progress that followed.

In 2003, Zewditu Memorial Hospital became the primary healthcare facility in Ethiopia to introduce antiretroviral drugs (ARVs), and Dr. Shweaamare was one in all the primary doctors to prescribe the life-saving drugs. At that point, treatment was not free. Many patients arrived seriously in poor health, often carried on stretchers with opportunistic infections.

“Patients were dying,” he says. “Some tried to sell their homes to pay for medicine.”

Today, the situation has modified dramatically: because of expanded access to antiretroviral therapy and robust national programs, people infected with HIV can start treatment early and live long, healthy lives.

Few developments illustrate this progress higher than stopping mother-to-child transmission.

At Zewditu Hospital, all pregnant women are routinely tested for HIV. People who test positive begin treatment immediately, under close commentary of mother and baby. In Ethiopia, the proportion of HIV-infected pregnant women receiving antiretroviral therapy to guard their babies increased from very low levels within the early 2000s to 96% in 2020, and across Ethiopia today, nearly all of babies born to HIV-infected moms are HIV-free.

“Thanks to treatment, people now live long and healthy lives,” says Dr. Shweaamare.

Over the years, she has watched children who were once critically in poor health with HIV grow up healthy. One of the patients she treated as a 7-year-old, affected by tuberculosis and advanced HIV, is currently studying to develop into a health care provider.

Despite this progress, Dr. Shweaamare says the fight is just not over. Stigma and late diagnosis still mean some patients find yourself in hospital dangerously in poor health.

For over 20 years, the Global Fund has invested within the fight against HIV in Ethiopia, expanding research and treatment, stopping mother-to-child transmission, and supporting community programs that reach those most affected by the disease.