World AIDS Day: 1988-2008

“Stop AIDS. Keep the Promise” is the campaign message of the 20th annual World AIDS Day. The theme this year is leadership, same as it was in 2007. But while last year people were encouraged to take the lead, this time the emphasis is on delivering on those promises.

“Building on the 2006 theme of accountability, leadership highlights the discrepancy between the commitments that have been made to halt the spread of AIDS, and actions taken to follow them through. Leadership empowers everyone -– individuals, organisations, governments –- to lead in the response to AIDS,” reads the World AIDS Day website. Information on how you can get involved is available here.

Worldwide, 33 million people are living with HIV infection, most of them in developing countries. Close to 2.7 million people were infected just last year. In the United States, more than one million people are living with HIV.

“For 280,000 HIV-positive women in the United States, new treatments have revolutionized care, making it possible to live on for decades and to bear children without transmitting the disease,” writes Molly M. Ginty at Women’s eNews. “But at the same time, women’s health advocates are marking the 20th annual World AIDS Day with more than a hint of frustration.”

“Key scientific questions aren’t even being asked,” Dazon Dixon Diallo, president of SisterLove, an Atlanta-based HIV-AIDS advocacy organization for women, told Women’s eNews. “The disease’s impact on female fertility and reproduction is barely being addressed.”

Ginty also notes some maddening statistics:

Hispanic women are five times more likely to contract HIV than white women, and African American women are 21 times more likely to do so, according to the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Among black women, the disease has become so rampant that it is this group’s leading cause of death in the 25-to-34 age bracket.

Health advocates say the rapid-fire spread of HIV-AIDS among women is fueled by the health care system’s failure to address it.

Though women account for 27 percent of HIV infections, they account for just 17 percent of HIV-AIDS research subjects.

In the 1990s, studies showed diaphragms and the spermicide nonoxynol-9 did not protect women against HIV, as previously hoped. Researchers started developing microbicides, topical products that prevent HIV from infecting a woman’s cells and give her more control over prevention than condoms do because she doesn’t have to negotiate their use with a partner.

But under the Bush administration, the Bethesda-based National Institutes of Health devoted only 2 percent of its AIDS budget to microbicide research, and trials of two major microbicides failed.

Read the rest of the article here:
http://www.ourbodiesourblog.org/