UN: Women bearing brunt of AIDS epidemic

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, March 09, 2004

UN: Women bearing brunt of AIDS epidemic

Women are now bearing the brunt of the AIDS epidemic, especially among young adults, in what U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Monday called a "terrifying pattern" in the galloping disease.

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Women are now bearing the brunt of the AIDS epidemic, especially among young adults, in what U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Monday called a "terrifying pattern" in the galloping disease.

Opening a session to mark International Women's Day, Annan said that women and girls accounted for more than half of the estimated 5 million newly-infected people with AIDS or HIV, the virus that causes the disease.

Moreover, among young people below 24 years of age, females make up nearly two thirds of those with HIV.

"Even a decade ago, statistics indicated that women were less affected," Annan said, "But a terrifying pattern has since emerged. All over the world women are increasingly bearing the brunt of the epidemic."

The global AIDS epidemic crossed a significant threshold in 2003 when for the first time, U.N. statistics showed nearly half of those living with HIV were women, up from 41 percent six years ago. Many of the young women are married to older men, who had affairs and brought the disease home.

Some 40 million people are living with AIDS worldwide, most of them in sub-Sahara Africa by the end of 2003, of which 19 million were women.

Jordan's Queen Noor told the meeting that in the Middle East a modest 600,000 people were thought to be living with HIV/AIDS and about 45,000 died last year.

But despite the seemingly low rates, 55 percent of those infected were female as of 2002.

"Our strong sense of family and religious traditional may inhibit behavior that spreads the virus, but at the same time those traditions may inhibit testing and reporting of those who may be infected," she said.

Queen Noor, the widow of King Hussein, questioned the low rates because of the widespread stigma attached to the disease, saying many who carried the virus would simply rather die than be rejected by friends and family,

"HIV is not simply a public health crisis but a human rights issues and especially a women's rights issue," she said. "They bear the children but seldom control their own sexual lives. They hold communities together but are marginalized in the political life."

Noleen Heyzer, executive director of the U.N. Development Fund for Women, told a news conference that violence, rape, economic deprivation and lack of education made women more susceptible to unwanted sex.

"Younger and younger girls, caught in an economic crisis are marrying older and older men," she said.

In one recent survey in South Africa, over a third of young women reported they were afraid of refusing sexual advances with about a third reporting that their first sexual encounter was forced, the United Nations reported,

But the increase in women's infection is not limited to Africa. U.N. figures show rates for women in Asia have increased to 30 percent from 20 percent a few years ago and are expected to rise again. Some 8 million people in the region are afflicted with AIDS.

Annan and others called for men to be involved in reducing the number of AIDS cases among women. They should "ensure an education for their daughters, abstain from sexual behavior that puts others at risk, forgo relations with girls and very young women..." he said.

Source: Agencies

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