[Shadow_Group] Fw: Female Epidemic AIDS

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rense.com

AIDS Strategy Failing As 
Disease Becomes 
Female Epidemic
By Jeremy Laurance 
Health Editor 
The Independent - UK
11-28-4
 
 
Global efforts to curb the spread of HIV/Aids are failing because the
world has not recognised that it is a female epidemic, a report said
yesterday. 
  
Aids claimed 3.1 million lives last year, the highest ever, and the rate
at which women and girls are affected is accelerating. The spread of the
disease shows no sign of slowing, despite billions of pounds invested in
treatment and prevention. 
  
The annual report on the Aids epidemic, published by UNAids and the World
Health Organisation yesterday, says a record 39.4 million people are
living with HIV, up from 36.6 million two years ago. 
  
Today, the Health Protection Agency will publish figures showing the
number of people living in the UK with HIV has also reached a record
high, above 50,000 for the first time. 
  
Globally, the fastest increase in infections is among women and girls.
They account for 57 per cent of all those infected in sub-Saharan Africa,
the worst-hit region, and for 75 per cent of those aged 15 to 24. 
  
In every region of the world, rates of infection in women are rising
faster than among men. In Russia, which has the biggest HIV epidemic in
Europe, affecting 860,000 people, the proportion of women infected has
leapt from 24 per cent to 38 per cent in two years. 
  
The "feminisation" of Aids has dawned slowly on the major international
organisations committed to tackling it. Until now they have placed the
ABC strategy - Abstain, Be faithful, use a Condom - at the centre of
their prevention efforts. 
  
Yesterday's report from UNAids said the ABC approach was "insufficient"
and left "serious gaps". The strategy to prevent one of the worst
diseases in human history must be rewritten with a new focus on women, it
says. Kathleen Cravero, deputy executive director of UNAids, told a press
conference in London to launch the report: "The prevention strategies are
missing the point. They are not responding to the realities of women's
lives. Women do not have the economic power or social choices over their
lives to put the information [about HIV prevention] into practice." 
  
Aids began as a mainly male disease, concentrated among homosexuals in
the United States, drug users in Russia and the Far East who injected,
and men who used prostitutes in Africa. But, as the epidemic has
lengthened, the disease has taken hold among women. The number infected
globally is about to overtake men. 
  
Women are biologically twice as likely to become infected during sex as
they are exposed to a larger dose of virus, and are more prone to be
cajoled or forced into sex because of their lack of social power. When
sex is violent and non-consensual, abstention is not an option. 
  
Wives of men who die of Aids may be forced out of the family home, which
may pass to the husband's relatives, leaving them destitute and forced to
resort to sex for economic survival. 
  
Studies in South Africa showed that women under 20 who were married -
usually to older men - had higher rates of infection than those who were
unmarried but sexually active, because the latter were better able to
negotiate condom use. 
  
Ms Cravero said: "We tell women to abstain when they have no right. We
tell them to be faithful when they cannot ask their partners to be
faithful. We tell them to use a condom when they have no power to do so."

  
"We need to give women power, to reduce levels of violence against them
and to protect their property and inheritance rights. We are still not
keeping pace with the epidemic and we need to tackle the problem in women
and girls." 
  
The emphasis on women is a major shift for UNAids which up to now has
focused on changing the behaviour of men. But the feminisation of the
epidemic has forced it to confront the failure of that strategy. 
  
Without an Aids vaccine, the best technical hope for women is a
microbicide to prevent transmission and provide them with a method they
could control. The report says a first generation microbicide could be
ready in five years if investment in research were expanded. A
microbicide that was 60 per cent effective and used by one in five women
could prevent about 2.5 million infections over three years, it says. 
  
Emma Thompson, the actress and Aids campaigner who attended the UNAids
launch, said: "Women's economic independence is vital in this struggle. I
know a girl who gave her body to a man for an apple. If we have girls who
have absolutely nothing we are not going to protect them." 
  
Alvaro Bermejo, head of the International HIV/Aids Alliance said: "The
report makes clear that too many strategies assume a greater level of
choice about sex, particularly among women, than exists. Everyone must
recognise this in their programmes - and work to change these economic
and social realities. If we don't, we cannot have the greatest impact on
the epidemic." 
  
© 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd 
  
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?story=58<http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?story=58>
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