Empowerment in the fight against HIV/AIDS

Dec 04, 2013 Editorial

Last Sunday, Guyana and the rest of the world observed World AIDS Day. Between 2011 and 2015, the theme for that day is: “Getting to zero: zero new HIV infections. Zero discrimination. Zero AIDS-related deaths”.
The World Health Organization (WHO)’s focus for this year’s campaign is improving access to prevention, treatment and care services for adolescents (10-19 years), “a group that continues to be vulnerable despite efforts so far”.
According to the WHO, HIV has claimed more than 36 million lives to date. There were approximately 35.3 [32.2–38.8] million people living with HIV in 2012. Sub-Saharan Africa is the most affected region, with nearly 1 in every 20 adults living with HIV. Sixty nine per cent of all people living with HIV are living in this region.
In 2012, more than 9.7 million people living with HIV were receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART) in low- and middle-income countries. Of this, about 640 000 were children.
In the midst of all the compelling evidence, empowerment of women and girls has become essential to the success of the fight against the pandemic.
Within the last two decades, the nature of the HIV/ AIDS pandemic has changed appreciably. Health authorities worldwide have recognised that women and girls are disproportionately affected by the disease. Systemic discrimination against females has dramatically increased their risk of HIV infection in gender-specific ways. In particular, the vast majority are neither willing nor able to negotiate with males for safer sex practices.
The painful truth is: many females lack the capacity to defend themselves against the consequences of high-risk activities by males. They cannot negotiate effectively for safer sex because a diabolical mix of physiological, social and economic factors keeps them perpetually powerless. This makes them especially susceptible to abuse, rape and other forms of sexual violence, as well as human trafficking. Being more vulnerable to sexual violence and coerced sex, they are cruelly exposed to the HIV virus and their rate of infection has overtaken that of males.
This inability to negotiate safer sex is compounded by a multiplicity of other factors that hinder women’s access to prevention methods and to treatment. HIV/AIDS prevention methods are, for the most part, male-controlled, such as the use of condoms. Further, women’s comparatively smaller incomes and access to finance tend to make them economically dependent on men and therefore without the recourses to acquire prevention and treatment.
To make matters worse, recent medical research indicates that females have a higher inherent risk of being infected with the HIV virus via heterosexual activity because of biological and physiological factors.
Since there is clear evidence that females are more at risk of HIV/AIDS infection than males, it follows that all national strategies, policies and programmes to fight the disease must acknowledge this and be designed accordingly.
In this scenario, the fight against HIV/AIDS cannot be fully effective unless it incorporates means of identifying and addressing the factors that make women particularly vulnerable to HIV infection. The initial focus of any drive to empower women and girls should be to lift more of them to a bargaining position in sexual relations in which they could say no to sex or insist on safe sex without risking life and limb or economic deprivation.
As long as females worldwide are deprived of the same rights and access to education, employment, finances and decision-making positions as men, they will continue to be infected by HIV/AIDS at increasingly higher rates and would become the main catalysts in the spread of the disease. As such, it is vitally important that local anti-AIDS campaigns would adequately integrate communications crafted to accelerate the empowerment of women as a primary means of containing the spread of HIV/AIDS.
The pandemic is now characterised by increasing infection of women driven by their disadvantaged position in society, so empowerment of women has become a medical issue as well as a social issue. Success in the battle against HIV/AIDS has become inextricably linked with the empowerment of women. Therefore, ensuring women’s development, eliminating all forms of discrimination against females and facilitating women’s full attainment of all human rights is now essential to the reduction of the spread HIV/AIDS.

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Empowerment in the fight against HIV/AIDS

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