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Specialists told the 19th International
AIDS Conference Wednesday that efforts to address AIDS among females must
expand beyond the current focus on pregnant women.
“These adolescent girls and young
women, our sisters and daughters, represent an unfinished agenda in the AIDS
response,” said Geeta Rao Gupta, UNICEF’s deputy executive director. Women
account for half the world’s HIV infections, and teenage girls are at especially
high risk in countries hit hardest by the virus.
A key global goal is stopping
mother-to-child (MTC) HIV transmission, and the number of babies infected by
this route has been dropping steadily for several years. The UN reported that
57 percent of HIV-positive women last year received drugs while pregnant and
nursing to protect their babies.
The drop, however, has not been
happening rapidly enough to meet the goal of virtually eliminating MTC
infections by 2015, said Dr. Chewe Luo, an HIV adviser to UNICEF. Few nations
continue providing mothers with AIDS drugs after their babies are weaned,
unless the woman’s condition worsens or she becomes pregnant again, Luo said.
New World Health Organization
guidelines recommend starting lifelong treatment for all pregnant women. Luo
praised Malawi for being the first low-income nation to adopt this strategy,
which she said is under consideration by Botswana, Rwanda, South Africa, and
Zambia.
Rao Gupta highlighted an innovative
approach in Kenya, in which poor families receive a few dollars a month to help
support AIDS orphans and other vulnerable children. Research showed that teens
in these households stayed in school longer, rather than quitting to go to
work, and that they reported fewer risky sexual behaviors, possibly because
they were not exchanging sex for money.
The Friends of AIDS Foundation is
dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for HIV positive individuals and
empowering people to make healthy choices to prevent the spread of the HIV
virus. To learn more about The Friends of AIDS Foundation, please visit: http://www.friendsofaids.org.
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