Articles

Devise new AIDS plan
Increasing focus on women and development of a 'social vaccine' needed to control the threat

Published on: 12/01/04

The global face of AIDS is changing dramatically, and efforts to control the epidemic will need to change with it.

On the 17th anniversary of World AIDS Day, it's important to remember that despite AIDS rarely being mentioned during the U.S. presidential campaign this year, the epidemic remains one of the world's most dangerous health problems, with 39.4 million people living with the virus.

Women now make up nearly half of the infected adults worldwide, according to the United Nations. And — as if to emphasize the outdated notion that the disease is confined to gay men — half of the new cases diagnosed last year around the world resulted from heterosexual sex. In Africa, the most heavily affected continent, women account for about 60 percent of those infected.

Here in the United States, where great strides have been made in preventing the onset of the disease among those diagnosed as HIV positive, half of the approximately 40,000 newly infected people last year are under 25 and more than half are African-Americans, many of them infected through unprotected heterosexual sex. AIDS is now among the top three causes of death among black and Hispanic women between the ages of 15 and 34.

The increasingly female face of AIDS amounts to a profound change in the course of the epidemic. With a vaccine still years away, there is a greater need than ever for what social scientists call a "social vaccine" — a worldwide initiative that combines proven programs to change the behavior of at-risk individuals and groups with increased testing for the virus and public awareness campaigns to emphasize that the threat of the epidemic is still with us.

More problematic for the world's diplomatic community is the need for new laws protecting women in countries where cultural and societal norms condone sexual violence against them. Women who are forced to have sex with their infected husbands and partners represent "a worldwide scourge and massive human rights challenge," the United Nations' annual World AIDS Day report said.

In the first year of his administration, President Bush won praise for boosting U.S. contributions to a new global trust fund to combat AIDS. But in the face of U.N. opposition to the U.S. military invasion of Iraq, talk within the United States of a global effort to combat AIDS has waned in recent years.

In his second term, the president could grab the high moral ground again by taking the lead to deal with the continuing epidemic both at home and abroad.

Reprinted with permission from The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution. Further reproduction, retransmission or distribution of these materials without the prior written consent of The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution, and any copyright holder identified in the material's copyright notice, is prohibited.