"I told my mother that I was coming out," Jegede-Ekpe said. Her mother resisted, but after hearing how important it was for her daughter -- the middle child of five siblings -- the mother gave her blessing.
Jegede-Ekpe said she needed to speak out because most people in Nigeria were in denial about the disease, and that was killing them.
"When people like myself come out, you see the faces of the epidemic for the first time. I'm not a fact or figure. And they can see that people like me can live a normal life," Jegede-Ekpe said.
Adeola Olunloyo, a Nigerian television journalist who met Jegede-Ekpe on a UNICEF-sponsored tour on AIDS in the US, invited Jegede-Ekpe in 2002 to her talk show called Youth Forum.
"She blew them away," Olunloyo said. "She held the audience spellbound. You can't believe the effect it had. We were all talking about HIV, but no one had seen anyone come forward. And here was a person so brave and so pretty, well, it made a huge impression."
Stephen Dickerman, Reebok's director of the human rights award program, said that Jegede-Ekpe was a compelling selection because of her courage.
"To understand her, you have to look at her at age 19, when she was diagnosed, and all the bravery and single-mindedness it took to do what she did," Dickerman said.
While she has been focused on drawing attention to people living with HIV and AIDS, her health also has been a concern. In 2001, a friend who hadn't seen her for a while was shocked at her weight loss and badgered UNICEF to buy antiretroviral drugs for Jegede-Ekpe. Jegede-Ekpe had been acting as a consultant to UNICEF.
The charity agreed, and Jegede-Ekpe's health gradually improved. Her CD4 count, which measures a body's ability to fight off diseases, had been at 160; medical guidelines call for antiretroviral treatment when CD4 counts dip below 200. A healthy person's CD4 count is around 800. Jegede-Ekpe's CD4 is now at 270.
Jegede-Ekpe, who is married to another leading AIDS activist in Nigeria, spends much of her energy running the Nigerian Community of Women Living With HIV/AIDS, which she helped start.
"I want this to reach a point when I can tell a neighbor that I have HIV or AIDS just like I would tell them I have malaria," she said.
Her biggest supporter is her mother, she said. Even though she educated her mother about AIDS, and even though she playfully dismisses her mother's belief that prayer can cure the virus, Jegede-Ekpe lives for her mother's daily phone calls.
Her mother, it turned out, is one person she does not have to fight.
"My mother is very, very proud of me," Jegede-Ekpe said. "She called me this morning, she calls me every day, and says, `How are you? Don't stress yourself.' She told me not so long ago, `I'm happy that you came out and told everyone you have HIV. That is what God sent you here to do.'"
John Donnelly can be reached at donnelly@globe.com.
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