Saving Women's Lives: Preventing and

Treating HIV/AIDS

For more information or to contact a spokesperson, call Cecilia Snyder 202-326-8711 csnyder@ccmc.org

June 21 — The global pandemic of AIDS is now taking women's lives at an unprecedented rate. In developing countries, the virus that causes AIDS is spread chiefly through heterosexual contact. Women are especially vulnerable where they are powerless to negotiate the terms of sexual relations. HIV also passes from women to their infants through pregnancy, delivery or breast-feeding.

HIV-positive women may face discrimination, ostracism and violence, and may have less access to medical care than men. But free or low-cost services to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS can be an integral part of all primary health care programs, while education and counseling can promote open discussion, responsible sexual behavior, and equal treatment for men and women.

The situation

- At the end of 2000, more than 36 million people were living with HIV/AIDS - 50 percent more than the World Health Organization projected in 1991. Of the total, 16.4 million are women and 1.5 million are children. More than 90 percent of all cases occur in developing countries.1

- Fully two-thirds of all HIV/AIDS cases (almost 26 million) are in sub-Saharan Africa, where women account for 55 percent of adult cases. 5

- Eastern Europe and Central Asia have suffered a rapid increase in reported cases, with infections in 2000 at 700,000, up from 420,000 in 1999.1

- More than 6 million people live with HIV/AIDS in South, Southeast and East Asia, where experts are concerned about the potential spread of the disease, particularly among the more than 2 billion people in China and India.1

- Women are disproportionately impacted biologically, economically and socially by HIV/AIDS:

- Young women are especially vulnerable to HIV transmission for biological reasons, such as the fragility of vaginal tissue.

- Mother-to-child transmission is the overwhelming source of infection for children under 10. Women with HIV/AIDS may transmit HIV to their babies during pregnancy, delivery or breastfeeding.4

- Many women maintain high-risk relationships for economic reasons. Women may suffer economic hardship when wage-earning family members fall ill or die, and may be forced into high-risk behavior such as prostitution.3 Social mores also make women less able to control or negotiate where, when and how sexual relations occur.

- Women may bear a heavy social burden in caring for family members infected with HIV. Women also play a special role in caring for the more than 13 million AIDS orphans, who face daunting challenges in terms of nutrition, abuse, exploitation and illness. 5

- Women were 40 percent of HIV/AIDS-infected adults in 1995 and are 47 percent today.1

- The global response to HIV/AIDS has three elements: 1) prevent people from becoming infected, using education, provision of services and development of vaccines; 2) treat people with HIV/AIDS, providing therapies such as anti-retroviral drugs, and 3) offer more care--to prevent secondary infections in those with the disease, and to help orphans.

Developments

- Momentum is building for a major new international trust fund to finance HIV/AIDS responses. Proposed by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and endorsed by the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the G-7, the fund would support prevention, treatment and care worldwide.6

- Thirty-nine pharmaceutical companies dropped a lawsuit against South Africa that sought to prevent it from producing generic drugs to make AIDS treatment cheaper and more accessible.7

- The International AIDS Vaccine Initiative has raised more than $230 million to speed development of a vaccine against AIDS, including millions leveraged by a major foundation's challenge grant.8

- HIV/AIDS is increasingly recognized as a security issue, with the potential to destabilize countries and regions. The UN Security Council has held four sessions on it in the past year. UNAIDS and the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations have signed an agreement to help prevent the spread of the disease among peacekeepers and vulnerable populations during conflict.9

- Research continues on women-controlled prevention methods. Of special promise are microbicides, a virus- and bacteria-killing substance that can be applied in the vagina, enhancing women's protection, particularly in situations where women have little say in sexual relations and matters of contraception.10

- Experience shows that anti-retroviral drugs during pregnancy and delivery, combined with other strategies, can reduce the incidence of mother-to-child transmission by up to 66 percent.4

Examples

- Since 1987, a Ugandan public education campaign has encouraged young people to discuss HIV/AIDS, condom use and sexual behavior. New infections dropped from 239,000 that year to 57,000 in 1997, and HIV prevalence among pregnant women dropped 40 percent.11 Where 14 percent of adults were infected in 1990, only 8 percent are now.12

- A 1992 program to inform Calcutta sex workers in one district about safe sex, HIV/AIDS and their rights to treatment reduced the rate of new infections, while rates rose in similar districts without the program.11

- The Brazilian government cut AIDS deaths in half and has treated thousands with low-cost generic medicines it provided by analyzing expensive U.S. drug manufacturers' products and reproducing them.13

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1. UNAIDS/WHO, AIDS epidemic update: December 2000," World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland, December 2000
2. O'Reilly, Brian, "Death of a Continent: Africa Will Never Be the Same," Fortune, New York, Nov. 13, 2000
3. UNAIDS, Gender and HIV/AIDS: Taking stock of research and programmes," UNAIDS, Geneva, Switzerland, 1999
4. UNAIDS, UNAIDS Technical Update on Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV/AIDS," UNAIDS, Geneva, Switzerland, September 2000
5. Annan, Kofi, Report of the Secretary General to the Special session of the General Assembly on HIV/AIDS, New York, New York, February, 2001
6. Pearlstein, Steven and DeYoung, Karen, "AIDS 'Trust Fund' Idea Advances," The Washington Post, page A-18, May 1, 2001
7. UNAIDS, "UNAIDS Welcomes Outcome of South African Court Case," UNAIDS Press Release, Geneva, Switzerland, April 19, 2001
8. International Aids Vaccine Initiative, press release, January 27, 2001
9. UNAIDS, "AIDS Now Core Issue at UN Security Council," UNAIDS Press Release, New York, January 19, 2001
10. UNAIDS, Microbicides for HIV prevention, Geneva, Switzerland, April, 1998
11. United Nations, The World's Women 2000: Trends and Statistics, New York, NY, 2000, pp 67-70
12. Brown, Lester, "Pandemic Produces Missing Generation, a Population of Orphans, a Shortage of Women," Global AIDSLink, Global Health Council, White River Junction, VT, December-January 2001
13. Rosenberg, Tina, "Look at Brazil," The New York Times Magazine, New York, Jan. 28, 2001

June 2001

Prepared by Family Care International (NY) and the Communications Consortium Media Center (DC) for use among organizations supporting the Programme of Action adopted by the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo.
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