Female Focus Needed to Stop AIDS, Say African and U.S. Activists

By Katherine Curtis

WASHINGTON - 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.

Women suffering from HIV/AIDS share a bed at a hospital in
the University of Kigali in Rwanda, February 13, 2006.
Twenty-five years after AIDS was first recognized, the world
is in better shape than ever to put an end to the disease but
is falling short on many fronts, the United Nations said on
Tuesday. In South Africa, the UN report found an increase in
the number of women getting infected. (Themis
Hakizimana/Reuters)

"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 U.S.
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."

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