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The skyrocketing HIV infection rates
seen among US women of color were a central theme for advocates attending last
month’s 19th International AIDS Conference in Washington. CDC data show that in
2009, black women accounted for nearly 30 percent of the estimated HIV
infections among blacks, who overall comprised 44 percent of all new infections
that year. The rate of new HIV infections among black women was 15 times that
of white women and more than three times that of Latinas.
Organizers of the “30 for 30
Campaign” say gender inequality is a driver of HIV’s disproportionate impact on
women, particularly black women, 30 years into the epidemic. Policy makers must
address social factors that make women vulnerable, said Dazon Dixon Diallo,
head of the Atlanta-based HIV/AIDS organization SisterLove Inc. These include
access to housing and female-focused care, as well as stopping gender-based
violence, which afflicts poor women, women of color and transgender women in
greater numbers.
C. Virginia Fields, president and
CEO of the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS Inc., is the campaign’s
chair. She said the Affordable Care Act (ACA) addresses some of these
disparities.
Additional approaches are detailed
in a guide published by 30 for 30 and the Harvard Law School Center for Health
Law and Policy Innovation. The report says comprehensive reproductive health
care must include routine HIV testing, and it advocates for HIV
prevention-focused domestic-violence assistance.
“Moreover, it calls on states to
expand Medicaid so that poor women, women of color and transgender women can
get the HIV care they need,” said Fields. However, Republican governors in six
states - including five with high rates of HIV and poverty - have indicated
they will opt out of the ACA’s federally financed expansion of Medicaid.
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.
TOGETHER WE REMAIN STRONG!
