The Global Battle against AIDS

I recently returned to Ithaca from the XVI International AIDS Conference, where I was a youth delegate and served as a member of the Youth Advisory Committee. Marching in the Women’s March at the Conference in Toronto, I was surrounded by men and women carrying banners and signs proclaiming “Sex Education, Female Condoms, Microbicides, Treatment Now,” “We need comprehensive sex education” and “It’s time to deliver treatment for women and girls.” The march in Toronto was a testament to the fact that HIV is, more than ever, an epidemic that disproportionately affects women and girls.

Around the world, there are 40 million people living with HIV/AIDS, and an additional 5 million people are infected every year. Globally, half of those who are infected are women and girls; and in sub-Saharan Africa, this number increases to 60 percent. In the third decade of HIV, women and girls are shouldering more and more of the burden of the epidemic because they are biologically, socially and economically more vulnerable to HIV infection than men. Current United States global HIV/AIDS policies do not address the factors — such as violence, economic dependence and lack of formal education — that put women at higher risk for HIV infection than men.

The U.S. government’s global HIV programs are based on the ABC — Abstain, Be faithful, use Condoms — model. This model does not address the needs of married women, sexually active adolescents or people who do not have control over their own sexual lives. Under current policy, only groups defined by the U.S. government as “high-risk” — mainly commercial sex workers and long-distance truck drivers — are given access to comprehensive HIV programs that include education about condoms. Women and girls — who make up a majority of people living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa — are not defined as high-risk, and do not receive sex education that recognizes their unique vulnerabilities to infection. Women and girls must have HIV prevention programs that respond specifically to their needs.

Two years from now, when the next International AIDS Conference is held in Mexico City, it is my hope that the U.S. government will have delivered comprehensive sex education and universal treatment for women and girls.

News Courtesy : theithacajournal.com

Tags: HIV, Female Condoms