Female Focus Needed to Stop AIDS, Say African and US Activists
    By Katherine Curtis
    OneWorld.net

    Wednesday 31 May 2006

    Washington, DC - A dramatic shift of funds and priorities is needed to stem the tide of the global AIDS pandemic, said women's health advocates in Washington, DC last week, marking the 25th anniversary of the disease's discovery.

    As world leaders convene in New York for a United Nations meeting to review progress on a 2001 commitment to fight the disease, the activists from Zimbabwe, Kenya, and the United States said that since HIV and AIDS tend to target women more than men, programs to combat the epidemic should do the same.

    "We will not turn around the epidemic unless we take bold actions that redirect policies, funding, and programs to reflect the global face of AIDS - which is increasingly women and girls," said Yolonda C. Richardson, president of the Washington, DC-based Centre for Development and Population Activities (CEDPA), at a conference her organization hosted at the National Press Club.

    The panel members, two of whom became activists after being infected with the virus, called the year 2006 a turning point in the global fight against AIDS; a time to realize that AIDS is more than a health crisis and more than a series of statistics.

    Despite ongoing efforts to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS, infection rates continue to rise and, in many regions around the world, young women are being disproportionately infected and affected by the disease. In sub-Saharan Africa nearly 60% of those infected are women, in Latin America and the Caribbean girls are nearly twice as likely as boys to become infected, and in the United States AIDS is now the leading cause of death for African American women ages 25-34.

    Additionally, experts note that many of the women who are at the greatest risk of becoming infected with HIV are vulnerable because of the behavior of others and do not practice high risk behavior themselves.

    Pauline Muchina, Senior Women and AIDS Advocacy Officer at the Global Coalition on Women and AIDS, a UN-led initiative, called for more HIV/AIDS resources to be devoted to women and girls, and for more women to be involved in designing and implementing programs. "Women are now at the center of the AIDS pandemic. They must be at the center of renewed efforts to halt its spread," she said at last week's conference.

    Heads of State, cabinet ministers, and about 1,000 representatives of civil society and the private sector are gathering at UN Headquarters in New York from Wednesday to Friday to discuss successes and failures in efforts to halt and reverse the HIV/AIDS epidemic by 2015.

    First Lady Laura Bush is expected to head the US delegation.

    Kenyan Inviolata Mwali Mmbwavi will also attend the UN meetings. Mmbwavi was infected with HIV when she was 19 years old and kept her status secret for many years because she feared the stigma and discrimination that often magnifies the effects of living with the disease. Today, she heads a national coalition of people living with HIV and AIDS in Kenya and believes that, above all, AIDS in Kenya is a human rights issue.

    "To truly stem the tide of AIDS in Kenya and developing countries, we need to address the root causes that fuel the AIDS epidemic and decrease the vulnerability of women and girls," argued Mmbwavi.

    For Tendayi Westerhof, who discovered she was HIV-positive in 2002, the key to fighting the epidemic is spreading information and addressing the social and cultural factors that make women more susceptible to infection. "In [Zimbabwe] the epidemic is fueled by social practices ... there are barriers that prevent women from being able to fully protect themselves against infection," said Westerhof, who is the executive director of the Public Personalities Against Aids Trust in Zimbabwe and a well-known fashion model in her country.

    Both activists believe women, and particularly those in developing countries, must be given the social, political, and economic power to protect themselves from HIV/AIDS, and to seek treatment if they are infected with the disease.

    This is especially true for Africa, which is home to more than 25 million of the 40 million people living with HIV/AIDS worldwide. In fact, according to Africa Action, a Washington, DC-based non-profit organization working on African affairs, AIDS-related illnesses account for more deaths in Africa than casualties from conflicts.

    "Africa is facing a human development crisis due to the destabilizing impact the disease has on all sectors of the economy and society," said Africa Action in a recent report on the UN response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

    But as popular consciousness of the magnitude of the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa has grown, the next challenge is to make women and girls central to policy creation and implementation, activists continue to stress as the international community meets on the issue this week.

    "At CEDPA, we believe that when women move forward, the world moves with them," said Richardson. "This has never been more true than it is in the case of AIDS."