26 Years In – It’s About Time to Recognize HIV’s Impact on Women
This Saturday, March 10th is the Second Annual National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. Last year was the first year set aside as a national observation day to raise awareness of the increasing impact of HIV/AIDS on the lives of women and girls.
To that end, this year’s theme is “Taking Action to Save Our Lives”
Is it about time? – Well, today:
- 48% of all adults living with HIV/AIDS are women.
- 31% of people living in MA recently diagnosed with HIV infection are women.
- 29% of people living with HIV/AIDS in Massachusetts are women.
- 50% of teen girls in 2003 accounted for new HIV infections among those ages 13-19.
- HIV is the leading cause of death for African American women aged 25-34 years.
- Across the country, HIV infection is the 5th leading cause of death among all women aged 35-44 years.
- And other than HIV, the only diseases causing more deaths of women are cancer and heart disease.
IS IT ABOUT TIME?
“taking action to save lives”? Why not two decades ago? That may have made a big difference today if treatment options and services for women were addressed earlier on. The call to raise awareness now? – Is that because people are finally getting it that women are getting “it”. Or maybe, because so many women are dying – hence the call to take action to “save lives”. The real bottom line is that women historically get overlooked. Whatever happened to “save the women and children first”? I guess not when it comes to HIV infection.
One thought, is that 78% of HIV positive women have contracted HIV through heterosexual sex or “presumed heterosexual sex” yet, “presumed heterosexual” is not an “identified risk” factor – so many women don’t fit nicely into one of the “high risk” categories (i.e., MSM or IDUs that gets “counted” and more importantly, funded). Maybe because most women don’t have an “identified risk” is why there has been so little, for example, research on what the effect of sex/gender and body weight has on antiretroviral medications or a real effort to develop gender specific programs and resources across the nation for women. Instead, women have to fit into treatment protocols and medication doses determined for men – but this isn’t a new idea. Not that long ago, the largest treatment study for breast cancer was conducted on men only. Did having male subjects for this study delay women’s breast cancer treatment that is now available for women – I’m not sure – but likely.
Women are not an emerging at risk population – they are here and have been HIV positive for decades - the 2007 awareness campaign to “take action and save lives” – well, now in the 26th year – IT IS ABOUT TIME! Don’t you think?
