Women and HIV/AIDS

HIV infections among women and girls have risen in every part of the world in recent years. The numbers point to a fundamental and startling reality-the HIV/AIDS pandemic is inextricably linked to the brutal effects of sexism and gender inequality, most pronounced in Africa.

Consider these statistics: The latest reports from the UNAIDS (Dec. 2007) show 33.2 million people are living with HIV throughout the world. Sub-Saharan Africa has more than two-thirds (22.6 million) of the total number of HIV infections. Sixty-two per cent (14 million) of those infected are women and adolescent girls. Seventy-five per cent of all HIV-positive women in the world are African.

Why are we allowing women and girls to die from this preventable and treatable disease? What is a woman worth in our world today?

30 vulnerable women from Tombo Village and its environs over the weekend received their certificates including start up kits and seed money, to embark on self reliance projects in their respective communities, after completing six weeks of training at the Lumtubum skills training center in Tombo.

The skills training program was organized by the Society for Women and Aids in Africa Sierra Leone Chapter (SWAASL) in collaboration with their funding partners Global Fund for Aids that focuses on vulnerable women who need empowerment to control and prevent the spread of HIV/ AIDS in Sierra Leone.

Speaking at the graduation ceremony Sister Monica Green of the Marie Stopes Society who chaired the program expressed thanks and appreciation to SWAASL, the funding agency Global Fund for Aids and the trainees for completing 6 weeks of skills training in Gara tie dying, Batik, and soap making.

She highlighted the role of women in fighting to alleviate hunger and poverty which is a recipe to get infected with HIV/ AIDS; she noted that it was against this backdrop that SWAASL deemed it fit, to identify with the vulnerable women of Tombo so that they can be empowered with skills to generate income.

More than half a million women still die each year in pregnancy and childbirth, often bleeding to death because no emergency obstetrical care is available, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said on Friday.

Despite modest progress, particularly in Asia, the global maternal mortality toll remains stubbornly stable due to a lack of financial resources and political will, it said.

More than 99 percent of the estimated 536,000 maternal deaths worldwide in 2005 occurred in developing countries, half of them in sub-Saharan Africa, it said in a report entitled "Progress for Children: A Report Card on Maternal Maternity".

"One of the critical bottlenecks has always been access to highly skilled health workers required to deliver emergency obstetrical care, particularly caesarian sections," Peter Salama UNICEF's chief of health, told a news briefing.

Around 50 million births in the developing world, or about 4 in 10 of all births worldwide, are not attended by trained personnel, according to the report.

Rising food prices around the world are likely to drive poor women to trade sex for basic goods like fish and cooking oil, raising the risk of new AIDS infections, U.N officials said on Monday.

Delegates at a major AIDS conference in Mexico cited the cases of fisherwomen in the Pacific and women in Kenya desperate for food being forced to sell their bodies, adding to concerns of a new twist in the spread of the deadly pandemic.

"Food is such a basic need that you can see people really going to great lengths," said Fadzai Mukonoweshuro of the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization in southern Africa.

Climbing food prices -- due to increased use of biofuels, the growing demand for grains to feed a booming Asia, droughts and market speculation -- caused 50 million more people to go hungry last year compared to the year before, the United Nations said.