Women bear the brunt of HIV/AIDS

FRANK BARNES presents some scary figures on the spread of HIV/AIDS.

A colleague recently gave me a small ribbon made of about 200 small beads and forming a red AIDS ribbon on a mauve background with blue, white and black stripes underneath. It comes from Botswana and I wear it proudly as it is highly symbolic of the theme of World AIDS Day 2004 -- December 1, which is Women, Girls and HIV/AIDS. In Sub Saharan Africa there are officially 25 million adults and children living with HIV. Of these, 13.1 million are women and in 2003 there were more than 2.2 million deaths from AIDS. Seven southern African countries (Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe) have adult prevalence rates above 20 percent.

Globally young women and girls are more susceptible to HIV then men and boys with studies showing they can be 2.5 times more likely to be infected as their male counterparts. Their vulnerability is primarily due to inadequate knowledge about AIDS, insufficient access to HIV prevention services, inability to negotiate safer sex, and a lack of female controlled HIV prevention methods, such as microbicides.

At the same time all over the world women do not enjoy the same rights and access to employment, property and education as men. Women and girls are also more likely to face sexual violence which can accelerate the spread of HIV.

Around half of all people living with HIV in the world are female and as UN Secretary General Kofi Annan says: "All over the world women are bearing the brunt of the epidemic."

Women hold families and communities together and are generally the carers of the men in our society who are suffering from HIV and AIDS. Women right across the world experience high degrees of isolation and invisibility when it comes to dealing with HIV.

In North America AIDS is now the leading cause of death for African-American women aged 25-34.

In China where figures are fairly shaky the main cause of HIV infection is the growing use of intravenous drugs while in south east Asia there are close to 10 million people living with HIV.

I use these figures to give you some idea that we are dealing with a world wide epidemic, and whilst in Australia we have been able to stay on top of the virus there are recent disturbing statistics. In the past two years new infections have increased about 20 percent in Victoria and last year there was an 18 per cent increase in new infections in NSW.

Education is prevention

In most non-western countries there is no screening of blood; people cannot afford treatment. The drug companies in collusion with the governments of America and Britain refuse to lower their prices in order to make the anti-viral drugs which are accessible in their countries available for the poor people who need them. Because of the poverty and because of so-called moral and religious attitudes, education does not happen for young people in schools. The epidemic can only get worse as further poverty takes hold and with the death of so many teachers there are fewer people in the schools able to carry on the message that is so urgently needed for their students.

The ribbon that I wear from Botswana was made by one of the women living with HIV/AIDS and it is their only income. There is no Government support, and contracting HIV is a death warrant. We can help by firstly being aware of what World AIDS Day is about. We can make a donation or we can buy a ribbon or badge. The money raised goes into further research and it is this research that will hopefully one day find a vaccine that we will be able to make available to the third world countries.

What if 30 per cent of your teachers had a deadly disease?

• An average of 1000 teachers a year are dying of AIDS
• 420,000 children have lost one or both parents to AIDS
• Half of today's 15 years olds will die of AIDS in the next ten years

In Zimbabwe:

• More than 1.5 million people are living with HIV/AIDS
• More than a quarter of the population between ages 15 and 49 are positive
• More than 30 percent of the country's teachers carry the HIV virus

In Kenya:

• An average of 10 teachers die each week from AIDS
• More than 3 million people will die in the next decade from AIDS
• 20 percent of students between ages 14 and 17 are HIV positive, with the infection rate among girls substantially higher than among boys

In Zambia:

• AIDS annually claims the lives of about half the number of newly trained teachers
• There are 620,000 AIDS orphans
• 20 percent of the population is HIV infected

Frank Barnes is an Organiser in Western Sydney who has been responsible for the NSWTF and AEU policies on HIV/AIDS. He also attended the EI Congress and a conference on Gay Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender education where HIV/AIDS was a major topic. All figures used in this article are from UNAIDS (Joint United Nations Programmes on HIV/AIDS) and from the AIDS Trust of Australia.

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