LISA RICHWINE, United Nations | Tuesday
WINNING the battle against Aids requires helping young African women and girls achieve sexual and economic equality to protect themselves from the deadly disease, government officials said on Monday.
Aids infection rates are rising rapidly among young women and girls in many African countries.
In Mozambique, HIV rates for girls and young women are estimated at 15%, twice the rate of boys their age.
Prime Minister Pascoal Manuel Mocumbi said three out of five girls are married by age 18, 40% of them to much older, sexually experienced men who may expose them to sexually transmitted diseases.
”Abstinence is not an option for these child brides. Those who try to negotiate condom use commonly face violence or rejection,” Mocumbi told a UN General Assembly special session on HIV and Aids.
The three-day meeting is set to conclude on Wednesday with a declaration setting goals for fighting the epidemic, which has killed 22-million people worldwide and now infects 36-million, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
Mocumbi called for programs to educate women and girls and provide them with communication skills and condoms.
”We must summon the courage to talk frankly and constructively about sexuality. We must recognise the pressures on our children to have sex that is neither safe nor loving,” Mocumbi said.
He said the battle against Aids would fail ”if women and their rights are not brought to the forefront.”
Botswana’s President Festus Mogae said that reversing the Aids epidemic required ”meaningfully addressing the structural determinants, such as poverty and gender inequality, which exacerbate the spread of HIV/Aids.”
In Botswana, more than half of women between the ages of 25 to 29 have HIV, the virus that causes Aids, as well as nearly 44% of women between 20 and 24, Stephen Lewis, the UN Aids envoy to Africa, said after a recent visit there.
”One out of every two women in their 20s has been issued a death warrant in Botswana unless we can turn it around,” Lewis said.
Increasing numbers of women in poverty also are hindering Aids care and prevention efforts in Zambia, Health Minister Levison Mumba said.
”Women are not economically empowered and lack complete control of their lives, particularly control of their sexuality,” she said. – Reuters
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