Women and AIDS
New initiative to halt spread of AIDS among women

afrol News, 25 May - Two UN agencies join hands to fight the fast spread of HIV/AIDS among women and girls. Women now constitute 47% of the 34.7 million adults living with HIV/AIDS worldwide, while the number is 55% for Sub-Saharan Africa - and increasing.

The UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) yesterday signed a cooperation agreement in a move to address the alarming spread of HIV/AIDS among women and girls, according to a statement from the two UN agencies. 

This new partnership takes place as governments end week-long deliberations leading up to the June 25 Special Session of the General Assembly on HIV/AIDS. "The agreement will help to strengthen the UN global response to the epidemic," the statement reads. 

- While the disease itself is a health issue, the epidemic is a gender issue, UNIFEM says. According to the UNAIDS June 2000 report, women constitute 47% of the 34.7 million adults living with HIV/AIDS worldwide. 

UNIFEM concludes that; "If women had control over their bodies and were able to negotiate safe sex, the disease might not have reached such vast proportions. For instance, a Zambian study found that less than 25% of women believe that a married woman can refuse to have sex with her husband and only 11% thought they could ask their husband to use a condom." 

- Gender inequality is at the heart of the epidemic, which today is our biggest threat to development, said Noeleen Heyzer, Executive Director for UNIFEM. "We must address power imbalances in every single policy, strategy and programme related to prevention, treatment and care, if we seriously want to tackle this global challenge. It is not simply a matter of justice and fairness. In this case, gender inequality is fatal." 

It is estimated that 55% of all HIV positive adults in Sub-Saharan Africa are women. Teenage girls are infected at a rate 5 times greater than their male counterparts. By the mid 1990s, more than 25% of sex workers in Indian cities had tested positive for HIV. In Mumbai, the prevalence rate among sex workers had reached 71% in 1997. 

Studies in Africa highlight that the majority of young women cannot protect themselves against AIDS because they have to rely on their male partners who may decide whether or not to use a condom. On this background, the call for empowerment of women and girls as a part of fighting AIDS has been pronounced louder over the last years. 

- The proportion of women living with HIV/AIDS has risen steadily in recent years, said Dr Peter Piot, Executive Director of UNAIDS. "Today, young women in the developing world are twice as likely to be infected as men. We therefore warmly welcome this partnership with UNIFEM to help ensure that AIDS interventions and services fully meet the very specific and pressing needs of women and girls." 

As part of the new agreement, UNIFEM and UNAIDS will work together to raise awareness about the role of power imbalances between women and men and the role of gender relations in HIV transmission. The organizations will also investigate the impact of HIV/AIDS on both infected and affected women; the added burden of care imposed on women and girls; and the inequality in access to prevention, treatment, care and support. 

The organizations will also jointly develop gender-sensitive training manuals for peacekeepers and will work with women's groups in conflict areas to support their involvement in HIV/AIDS programs within the context of peacebuilding, peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance. 

The cooperation agreement is intended to formalize the relationship between UNIFEM and UNAIDS. For the past 4 years, the organizations have collaborated to develop community-based research initiatives to stem the prevalence of HIV/AIDS. Interviews with HIV positive women in India, for example, revealed that despite public information campaigns, women only learned about the importance of condom use after they had become infected. Public health officials and AIDS organizations are using these research findings to target campaigns more effectively.

Sources: Based on UN sources and afrol achives

 

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