Preventing HIV/AIDS for Girls and Women through Health Education and Reproductive Health Services

Statement by Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, Executive Director, UNFPA

Good afternoon.

I am pleased to be your keynote speaker today. I am committed to reducing the impact of HIV/AIDS on women and girls. And I would like to thank Adrienne Germain, the President of the International Women's Health Coalition, for organizing this important meeting and bringing all of us together.

We are here today in response to a terrifying trend—the rising rates of HIV infections among women and girls.

Today, mothers, sisters and daughters make up over half of the world's new HIV infections—more than 7,000 new infections every day.

Over the past two years, the number of women infected with the virus has increased in every region.

The steepest increases have occurred in East Asia, followed by Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

In Russia, the percentage of women among adults living with HIV jumped from 24 per cent in 2001 to nearly 40 per cent today.

In sub-Saharan Africa, the worst-affected region, 76 per cent of young people aged 15–24 living with HIV are female, and close to 60 per cent of adults living with the virus are women.

In the United States, AIDS is ranked among the top three causes of death for African-American women.

The feminization of the AIDS pandemic is not limited to countries with high HIV prevalence rates.

In countries on the verge of generalized epidemics, the highest rates of new infection are among women and girls.

And the reality is that many women who are infected with HIV –- or at great risk of becoming infected –- do not practice high-risk behaviour. They face the paradox of low risk and high vulnerability.

They are vulnerable for several reasons.

In many parts of the world, marriage and long-term monogamous relationships do not protect women from HIV.

Many get infected despite their faithfulness. We see this happening in communities and countries in all regions. Even when wives suspect husbands of being unfaithful, many husbands refuse to use condoms.

We also know that women do not have the option of abstaining when they would like to. For a large number of girls, violence or coercion marks their first experience of sexual relations.

And fear of violence often prevents women from obtaining HIV information, getting tested and seeking treatment.

Overall, poverty and gender inequalities drive the spread of HIV among women and girls. The low status of women and girls in society make them more vulnerable.

We are at a crossroads.

We know far too many women and girls are becoming infected and dying. And we know that we must take decisive action to reverse this deadly and growing trend. Women are key to development, stability in families and communities, and it is a right in its own to be able to protect oneself from infection.

We are here today to rethink the prevention paradigm. We need to shift our strategies so they are properly directed and of a scale to match the magnitude of the problem.

What does such a shift look like?

I believe it has three elements.

The first is universal access to sexual and reproductive health.

The second is mass public awareness campaigns for gender equality that stigmatize violence and discrimination against women and girls.

And the third and final element is female-controlled prevention methods.

Overall, this is a shift from crisis prevention to prevention for all.

It is a shift that would protect women in their homes and in their daily lives.

As Secretary-General Kofi Annan stated just a few weeks ago:

We must guarantee the right to sexual and reproductive health.

The agreement reached in Cairo at the International Conference on Population and Development provides a roadmap forward.

In Cairo, governments agreed to provide universal access to reproductive health, as part of the primary health system, by 2015.

They agreed to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment.

The challenge now is to create the political will to move this agenda forward in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

We must ensure that sexual and reproductive health programmes are part of every country’s national AIDS plan. This recommendation comes directly from the experts of the United Nations Millennium Project.

One of the high-impact and cost-effective "Quick Wins" identified by the Millennium Project is: to expand access to sexual and reproductive health services, including family planning and contraceptive information and services, and close funding gaps for supplies and logistics. The Millennium Project has recommended that a new target on reproductive health be added to the MDGs. This is important.

By linking reproductive health and HIV services, we will save money and, more importantly, save lives.

Secondly, we need to look at public education and awareness raising campaigns.

More than 20 years into the pandemic, every person should know how to prevent HIV infection. We must expand these campaigns to address issues that make women and adolescent girls more vulnerable—issues like violence, early marriage, and discrimination. When it comes to these issues, silence can be deadly.

It is now clear that promoting and protecting the rights of women also protects them from HIV/AIDS.

We also need to protect the human rights of women living with HIV/AIDS. Discrimination only helps the virus to spread. Prevention, treatment and care are the complete package for fighting the pandemic.

The third point is that female-controlled prevention options are important. Today, we have one such tool at our disposal–female condoms. We know that where female condoms have been introduced properly and made available to women, they use them successfully.

UNFPA is pleased to be a co-sponsor of the first Female Condom Summit, which will take place in September in Ottawa, hosted by the Government of Canada.

In closing, I would like to highlight the good work being done by the Global Coalition on Women and AIDS. My final point is that we must remember that Change is possible. The factors making women vulnerable to HIV are amenable to change, given sufficient attention, commitment and resources. Women themselves are key to the solution.

Thank you.