WORLD AIDS DAY

Got this interesting read in the mail so yeah here you go my lovely bloggers...

World Aids Day today


World AIDS Day is commemorated around the globe on 1 December to
review the progress made in the battle against the epidemic, and
brings into focus remaining challenges.

World AIDS Day 2004 focuses on "women, girls, and HIV and AIDS" -
the theme for the World AIDS Campaign 2004. The campaign, with
the strap-line 'Have you heard me today?' explores how gender
inequality fuels the AIDS epidemic.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has issued the
following message on World AIDS Day:

"This year's World AIDS Day is an occasion to recognize the
burden that women and girls bear in the age of HIV/AIDS, but
equally, to celebrate their achievements in the fight against the
epidemic.

Women are our most courageous and creative champions in the fight
against HIV/AIDS. In most countries and communities I have
visited around the world, it is women's voices that are heard
above all others; women advocates and activists who are moved to
act selflessly and speak publicly, often risking prejudice, abuse
or violence, in order to improve the lives of others.

The courage that women are showing in this fight is matched only
by the toll the disease is taking on them. Women already bear the
brunt of poverty. AIDS makes the poverty trap even easier for
them to fall into, and even harder to break. Women continue to
face discrimination on a number of fronts -- from the workplace
to laws governing land ownership and inheritance. AIDS puts them
at even greater risk.

Girls already make up the majority of children not in school.
When AIDS strikes the family, those girls who are attending
school are all too often taken out, to help run the household and
care for sick relatives. Women now account for about half of all
people living with HIV worldwide. In sub-Saharan Africa, where
more than three quarters of all HIV-positive women live, almost
57 per cent of adults living with HIV are women.

Why are women more vulnerable to infection? Why is that so, even
where they are not the ones with the most sexual partners outside
marriage, nor more likely than men to be injecting drug users?
Usually, it is because society's inequalities put them at risk --
unjust, unconscionable risk. A range of factors conspires to make
this so: poverty, abuse and violence, lack of information,
coercion by older men, and men having several concurrent sexual
relationships that entrap young women in a giant network of
infection. Nor does marriage always offer protection: in some
heavily affected countries, married women have higher rates of
HIV infection than their unmarried, sexually active peers.

These factors cannot be addressed piecemeal. What is needed is
real, positive change that will give more power and confidence to
women and girls.
Change that will transform relations between women and men at all
levels of society. Change that can only be brought about through
the education of girls, through legal and social reforms, and
through greater awareness and responsibility among men. Change
that will allow women to play to the full their role in the fight
against HIV/AIDS".