New report urges
the UK Government to put women at the heart of its global HIV and AIDS strategy. Embargoed until 01.12.07: Women and girls in the developing world are disproportionately vulnerable to HIV and
Aids because they face systemic and persistent discrimination, claims a new report from ActionAid and VSO. The report calls on the UK Government to put women at the heart of its new HIV and Aids
strategy, due out in early 2008.
‘Walking the talk: Putting women's rights at the heart of the HIV and Aids response’ argues that governments and international
donors too often ignore the vital steps needed to turn the tide for women in the fight against HIV and Aids. In sub-Saharan Africa the crisis is acute. Women make up 60% of all those living with HIV
and Aids, while young women are three times more likely to become infected than their male peers.
Legal and economic inequalities and limited access to health and education services only
deepen the crisis. Prevention methods frequently ignore the violence and lack of control many women experience around sex. Culturally, women face significant barriers in getting support if HIV
positive, while the burden they bear as care-providers often leaves them in poverty.
Carmen Sepulveda-Zelaya, ActionAid policy officer, and co-author of the report said that the
feminisation of the HIV and Aids pandemic is damning proof of the failure by governments to deliver on their commitments. “For too long, donors and governments in the developing world
have failed to confront the discrimination that increases women’s vulnerability to HIV and Aids.
“Until practical steps are taken to tackle rife gender inequality, HIV and Aids
will continue to devastate the developing world and claim thousands of lives. Action is now long overdue.”
Nina O’Farrell, VSO senior policy advisor and co-author of the
report said that women’s rights must be championed if the target of ‘universal access to prevention, treatment, care and support by 2010’ for those infected and affected by HIV and
Aids is to be achieved.
Calling on governments and donors to commit to a female-friendly response she said: “Moving from recognition of the feminisation of HIV and AIDS to action
is a major challenge. To date this challenge has been met by devastating inaction. The time has come to walk the talk on women’s rights. The solution to this problem is not rocket science but it
does require leadership, political commitment and resources.
“Women can not be treated as passive victims in the response against HIV and Aids but must be acknowledged as rights
holders, activists and vital agents of change.”
Donors continue to fund prevention programmes that do not reflect the realities faced by women. Some disproportionately focus on
abstinence and fidelity, which fails to recognise that some married women lack the power to make their husbands use condoms and reinforces stigma and discrimination for those living with HIV.
Too little money is spent on the development of female-centred prevention methods such as microbicides and female condoms. Research shows that 2.5 million HIV infections might be prevented if just
20% of women in poorer countries could regularly use a microbicide.
Even though women are slightly more likely than men to receive Aids drugs, they are less likely to continue taking them.
Many sacrifice medicines to their partners whilst others fear stigma, violence and abandonment if drugs are found. Often, they also do not have access to the right diet needed to enable the drugs to
work properly, particularly in poor rural areas.
Failing health systems mean women overwhelmingly shoulder the burden of providing care and support to people living with HIV and Aids in
their families and communities. Girls frequently drop out of school to care for sick parents, whilst women lose employment opportunities and carry the huge psychological and financial burden of
caring for the sick and dying without training, recognition or financial support.
The report calls for donors to increase support and funding for care and support services to relieve this
unsustainable burden on women and girls.
[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]
