World AIDS Day this year focuses on the alarming rise of women and girls with HIV and AIDS. No one is immune to HIV/AIDS. But some people are at greater risk of getting infected by the AIDS virus than others like women and girls. Of the 39.4 million people with AIDS or the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) around the world, 47 percent are female, an increase of six percentage points since 1997, according to new UN estimates.
In sub-Saharan Africa, by far the worst-hit region, 57 percent of cases are female. In the 15-24 age group, more than three out of every four infections occur among women and girls. Other regions are also seeing alarming increases among females.
In Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Latin America more than a third of people with HIV/AIDS numbers are now female. In Southeast Asia, 30 percent of adults (up from 28 percent in two years) and 40 percent of young people living with HIV/AIDS are women and girls. In United States minority groups, particularly African-American women are suffering most from the resurgent spread of the virus.
A host of social, legal and moral problems beset women. These can be sexual taboos, marital tradition, deep poverty ignorance discrimination and age-old gender roles. Infection by husbands, coercive sex and male violence.
Girls and women carry a heavier burden of the disease and are affected more often and at an early age by the HIV virus than men. If girls and women continue to get infected at such high rates, economies are going to crumble, societies are going to collapse.
It is cited that women who faced coercive sex from a husband who had been infected and young girls pressured into marriage or coaxed into sex with an older, infected man, get the disease.
In such situations, the problem is rights, legal protection, female empowerment, education and poverty.
In South Asia, women and girls are most vulnerable. Young women in the subcontinent account for 62 percent of infections (15-24 year old age group). In India, 90 percent of HIV-positive women are married and monogamous.
Married women are among the most vulnerable to HIV/AIDS infection in South Asia. For most women, the major risk factor for HIV infection is being married. Women of their social experience make it clear that one is not safe even in marriage.
When a woman gets married, she trusts her husband but she cannot trust his past. Husbands, who do not reveal that they are AIDS afflicted, pass this scourge on to their wives. Mostly women discover the fact after marriage.
For many years, AIDS education has been mainly targeted at women rather than men who refuse to have safe sex and then infect their partners. Therefore, the women are more often the victim.
Seven million people in Asia Pacific countries are currently infected with HIV/AIDS, according to UN figures in which one third are women.
The high percentage of women infected means the virus will then spread more quickly to other people. The situation is particularly critical in Sub-Saharan Africa, where higher rates of poverty among women, lack of education, and sexual violence inside and outside marriage make women more susceptible to infection
House to house counselling is needed to spread information and fight discrimination and ignorance about the disease in tradition-bound societies.
Our main task must be to give hope to the HIV-positive women to educate them and their families. The attitude of our communities has also slowed down the efforts to spread awareness.
As there is very thin line between ignorance and vulnerability women have to talk to each other to deal with this menace.
The statistics on young girls and AIDS are terrifying. Sexual abuse of young girls is rampant in southern African countries, where about one in four adults is living with HIV or AIDS. All too often, HIV-positive men think that sex with a young virgin can cure them.
The social and economic empowerment of women is key. Governments must provide the resources needed to ensure women's rights to sexual and reproductive health.
If we don't deal with prevention issues of sexual violence and coercion, gender equality and relationships such as girl children married off to older men, we're just going to have more and more people who need treatment. It's an endless journey that way.