Activists, Agencies Call for New AIDS Strategies

25 Years into Epidemic, Greater Focus on Women Critical to Turning Tide

May 23, 2006—In advance of a major global political review of AIDS, activists and global agencies working on the frontlines of HIV/AIDS today called for a major shift in prevention, care and treatment efforts to address the realities of women’s lives.

“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 Centre for Development and Population Activities, at a press conference held in Washington, DC today.

AIDS was first identified 25 years ago by the Centers for Disease Control. The last decade has seen a quadrupling of global spending against AIDS, but infection rates continue to rise in nearly every region, especially among women and girls.

Today, more than 17 million women live with HIV worldwide, and three out of four are in sub-Saharan Africa, according to UNAIDS. In the United States, AIDS is now the leading cause of death for African American women 25 to 34. In Latin America, the rate of new HIV infections among women is almost double that among men.

“Women are now at the center of the AIDS pandemic. They must be at the center of renewed efforts to halt its spread,” said Pauline Muchina, Senior Women and AIDS Advocacy Officer, the UNAIDS-led Global Coalition on Women and AIDS.

Muchina called for more AIDS resources to be devoted to women and girls, and more seats at the table for women, particularly women living with HIV, when AIDS programs are designed, implemented and assessed.

The Washington press conference was held in advance of a United Nations review of AIDS that will take place May 31-June 2 in New York City. There, First Lady Laura Bush is expected to head the U.S. delegation that will join other government leaders and more than 1,000 AIDS experts and activists to review five years of action, challenges and progress since the Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS was adopted by world governments in 2001.

As governments begin debating how to combat AIDS, they should consider the “enormous stigma and discrimination” that magnifies the effect of the epidemic on women’s lives and presents barriers to testing, treatment and care, said Inviolata Mwali Mmbwavi, who heads a national coalition of people living with HIV and AIDS in Kenya.

Kenyan women fear “disclosing their HIV status to their husbands and families because they fear abandonment, violence or eviction from homes and communities,” Mmbwavi said.

Tendayi Westerhof, a Zimbabwean fashion model and head of Public Personalities Against AIDS Trust, said that “women are often blamed for bringing home AIDS,” leaving them without family support when they declare their status.

“This is in fact what happened to me,” Westerhof said. “I was left without any family support or resources when I discovered by HIV positive status and I heard the same story from so many women who were abandoned by their husbands even when it was the husband who brought home the disease.”

Westerhof called for “more resources [to be] set aside to provide women living with HIV and AIDS with life skills, education, training and increased access to financial support.”

Both Mmbwavi and Westerhof are featured in a new magazine released at the press conference that profiles 12 women leaders working on the frontlines against AIDS. These leaders came to CEDPA’s Washington headquarters for a month-long Women Lead in the Fight Against AIDS workshop.

Among the powerful stories and creative approaches highlighted in the WomenLead magazine:

• Irene Kpodo uses drama and play-acting to get audiences to discuss ways to avoid HIV/AIDS. At the Ghana Association of People Infected and Affected by HIV/AIDS, she educates families and teens, especially young women, in basic facts about how the disease is transmitted, its effects on the body and ways to cope with it at home. CEDPA opened new approaches for her. “I say I have had two lives: one without HIV and one with it,” she said.
• Svitlana Moroz is a board member of the All-Ukrainian Network of People Living with HIV, a country where more than 70 percent of people living with HIV/AIDS are intravenous drug users. Moroz wanted CEDPA to help her use education and information to raise public understanding and combat widespread violence against women in her country: “For our clients it will be something very new.”
• Zeenat Sultana hopes to keep HIV/AIDS rates low in Bangladesh by working with commercial sex workers, transport workers, migrants and other groups at high risk. An adventurous physician for the Bangladesh Center for Communications Programs, she came to CEDPA to learn new approaches to fundraising and presenting her messages on the urgency of preventive action against AIDS. “We are a poor country and a high level would be devastating for us.”

These women’s stories illustrate problems and solutions that were announced at today’s press conference in Washington. As leaders convene at the United Nations to assess their progress against AIDS, today’s speakers called for governments to:

• Seek the counsel of women’s groups and networks and address women’s health and social needs in programs to prevent the spread of HIV and to treat and care for those living with HIV/AIDS.
• Fund comprehensive HIV prevention programs that include public education, condom distribution and equal access to reproductive health care and treatment, especially for girls and women.
• Expand access to existing women-initiated methods of preventing HIV infection, such as female condoms, and accelerate research into new methods such as microbicides.
• Involve men and boys as full partners in changing practices such as sexual coercion, violence against women and harmful traditions like dowry demands, child marriage and so on.
• Promote the rights and status of women and girls by expanding their access to education, training, labor markets, technical assistance, credit and inheritance, and giving them equality with men under the law.

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

To find out more about these women’s stories, read CEDPA’s new magazine, WomenLead in the Fight Against AIDS.

And read press statements from Yolonda Richardson, Tendayi Westerhof, Inviolata Mwali Mmbwavi and Paulina Muchina. 

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