Women and AIDS
"Women's role in fighting AIDS should be more central"

afrol News, 19 June - Lessons from Sub-Saharan Africa clearly demonstrate the need for a central place of women in the fight against the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The UN's women and gender agency UNIFEM therefore has called on world leaders to take women's role more serious when making strategies.

UNIFEM bases its call on lessons learnt from the fight against AIDS on the African continent. For example, a UNIFEM study in Zimbabwe, among a focus group of 268 respondents, revealed how women predominantly were the real victims of the disease. The Zimbabwe study showed that; 

• Of those who had experienced a negative income shock due to HIV, 77.6% were female.
• 34% of those widowed reported that they had been accused of causing the death of their husbands. 
• 70% of the children removed from school to take care of sick relatives were girls. 

In Senegal, further, a community research focused on cultural practices that promote HIV/AIDS. A key finding was that both literate and illiterate women were equally uninformed about unsafe sexual practices. Sex education is not included in the school curriculum. 

In one Kenyan study by UNIFEM, over one quarter of teenage girls interviewed had had sex before 15, of whom, one in 12 was already infected. A Zambian study confirmed 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. 

UNIFEM Executive Director, Noeleen Heyzer, therefore today announced a 5-point Call for Action to make women central to every strategy in the fight against HIV/AIDS. "There is a direct correlation between women's low status, the violation of their human rights and HIV transmission," said Heyzer. "This is not simply a matter of social justice. Gender inequality is fatal." 

The announcement comes just before world leaders meet in New York from June 25-27 for the first Special Session of the General Assembly on HIV/AIDS. "The reason that AIDS has escalated into a pandemic is because inequality between women and men continues to be pervasive and persistent," said Heyzer. "Too often, women and girls cannot say no to unwanted and unprotected sex without fear of reprisal." 

The statistics are alarming, UNIFEM reports. Last year, 1.3 million women died of AIDS. Nearly half of all new HIV infections occur in women. In Sub-Saharan Africa, teenage girls are 5 times more likely to be infected than boys. Surveys in 17 countries found that over half of girls could not name a method of protection against HIV transmission. 

- It is time for the AIDS community to join hands with the international women's community to hold governments accountable, UNIFEM's Executive Director said, as she laid out strategies in the Call for Action to challenge the pandemic. The Call for Action includes: 

• Guarantee Access to Prevention and Treatment 
• Make Research Gender Sensitive 
• Educate and Inform 
• Address Gender Inequality in Policy 
• Address HIV Transmission in Conflict Situations 

Studies by UNIFEM have demonstrated that these gender sensitive actions will work in Africa. In its collaboration with the UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), UNIFEM has developed community-based research initiatives to stem the prevalence of HIV/AIDS. Where women have been included in the strategies, significant gains were made.

Sources: Based on UN sources and afrol achives

 

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