AFRICA: Empowering women to prevent HIV/AIDS

BARCELONA, 8 July (PLUSNEWS) - As long as women were denied basic needs such as access to condoms and power to negotiate their sexual relationships, the HIV/AIDS epidemic would continue to increase, activists said.

The right to basic HIV/AIDS prevention and reproductive health for women in internally displaced persons (IDPs) camps in Angola has received little attention from planners and NGOs intent on creating infrastructure development, said Rosemary Barber-Madden, former representative of the United Nations Population Fund in Angola (UNPFA).

"Armed conflict has created a perverse social and human environment, in terms of [HIV/AIDS] infection, transmission and mortality rates," she said.

The changes in population dynamics in the country, and gender-based violence, has made women particularly vulnerable.

A study conducted by the UNPFA surveyed 1,421 women, 70 percent in IDP camps, another 30 percent in peri-urban communities in the four provinces of Huila, Benguela, Malange and Zaire.

Madden noted that in a country where the epidemic had not yet reached its peak, the low life expectancy of women and high infant mortality rates were alarming.

"Most of the women surveyed showed a complete lack of understanding about transmission and no sense of danger about HIV/AIDS," Madden said.

There were no distribution programmes in camps and no condoms were freely available. Education programmes were virtually nonexistent

"They lacked even the most basic information about ways of protecting themselves and had no decision making power whatsoever," she said.

Thirty-nine percent of the women in the camps said they had sometimes been forced to prostitute themselves to buy food.

Economic empowerment had to be integrated into programmes targeting women, as this was the only way to reduce their vulnerability, Fumni Olatidoye, a Nigerian youth activist said.

Life Vanguards, is a Nigerian prevention project, which empowers women by providing vocational training and entrepreneurial skills.

According to Olatidoye, the success of the project lies in its holistic approach, which views young women as resources, rather than problems.

But any interventions targeting women were still doomed to failure, with something as basic as the male condom remaining inaccessible in many communities in the developing world, a delegate from an Indian NGO warned.

"All these presentations on prevention are still abstract discussion because condoms are still not available at grassroots level," she said.

Madden called for increased advocacy on female controlled prevention methods such as the female condom.

When UNFPA took female condoms into the IDP camps and explained how they worked, one woman is said to have remarked: "When I hold this in my hand, I feel powerful".

[ENDS]

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