United Nations and US think-tank documents on the "feminisation" of the AIDS disaster give the impression that these expert panels and their finely worded 10-point action plans are assessing a disaster afflicting another planet or species.
Their horrific statistics are believable and their wish-lists of solutions look and sound reasonable. But their practice shows that the corporate elite they speak for has no interest in solving this crisis.
Women's HIV infection rates are on the rise. According to Fatal Vulnerabilities — Reducing the Acute Risk of HIV/AIDS among Women and Girls (a February 2003 report from the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies), in 1997, 41% of those infected with the virus were women. By 2002, women comprised 50% of the 40 million people infected with HIV.
Third World women are bearing the brunt of the increase. Without access to life-saving drugs — available in most First World countries — those infected can expect to die within three to five years. Stephan Lewis, the UN's special envoy on HIV/AIDS in Africa, told the Microbicides 2004 conference in London that African women's rate of infection stands at 58%, rising to 67% for women between the ages of 15 and 24.
According to Lewis, in urban Botswana women aged 15 to 19 have infection rates of 15.4%. Men of the same age have an infection rate of only 1.2%. For women between the ages of 25 and 29, the infection rate is a horrific 54.1%, while it is 29.7% for men of the equivalent age.
According to Fatal Vulnerabilities, in parts of the Caribbean, girls are infected at twice the rate of boys.
Poverty, sexism, rape and war are behind the dramatic increase. In conflict situations, such as in Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, sexual violence has been used as a weapon of war, exposing large numbers of women and girls to HIV. Refugee, orphaned and internally displaced women are particularly at risk of HIV infection through rape.
Fatal Vulnerabilities notes the growth of the phenomenon of "sugar daddies" across sub-Saharan Africa, where richer, older men seek young girls as wives and mistresses, presuming them to be HIV-free.
HIV infection is dramatically more prevalent among prostitutes than the rest of the population. UNAIDS, the United Nations Program on AIDS, estimates that as many as 50% of sex workers in Kenya are HIV positive, while 45% are in Guyana, and 50% are in Burma.
Lack of sex education is a killer. In Cambodia and Vietnam, almost 50% of women between the ages 15 and 24 who have been surveyed believed they could contract HIV from a mosquito bite and nearly 35% believed a healthy-looking person could not be carrying the virus.
The pandemic is generating orphans — there are 13-15 million people under the age of 15 who have lost one or both parents as a result of AIDS. By 2010 the number is expected to rise to 25 million. Millions of children, mostly girls, are pulled out of school to look after sick relatives, do back-breaking paid work and run households.
An international outcry and a massive flow of money to stop the spread of the deadly virus has not been forthcoming.
Lewis pointed out that a UN task force on the plight of women in South Africa was only set up in 2003.
He highlighted the failure of a specific women's program available in 2000 in some fortunate African villages — pregnant women were given a course of Nepravine, a drug that halted the transmission of HIV from mother to daughter.
Anti-retroviral drugs which stem the onset of AIDS, available in the rich countries, were not available to African mothers due to exorbitant prices set by pharmaceutical companies.
The program was obviously short-sighted, but better than the South African government's response, which was to withdraw the provision of these drugs. Parks Mankahlana from the governing African National Congress commented in Science magazine: "The mother is going to die and that HIV-negative child will be an orphan. That child must be brought up. Who is going to bring the child up? It's the state, the state. That's resources you see."
Ten-point plans and conferences of elite experts have not resulted in solutions to this crisis. What's needed is massive public funding for health care, the flooding of infected communities with generic AIDS drugs, intensive sex education campaigns and the strengthening of women's organisations that fight sexism, rape and war.
Rachel Evans
From Green Left Weekly, April 29, 2004.
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