AIDS awareness advocates want gov’t to focus on women

The government’s "A-B-C" strategy to fight the spread of acquired immune deficiency syndrome is obsolete, anti-AIDS advocates said yesterday.

Kim Rasing, coordinator of the Girls and Women in AIDS Network (GWAN), the strategy — A for abstinence, B for being faithful, and C for condom use — does not work because it is directed at men.

"I don’t think it’s easy to make the men abstain from sex, or be faithful or use condoms. So if we focus on these, the entire effort to control AIDS will fail," she told The STAR.

She said the government’s anti-AIDS advocacies should be focus on teaching women when to say no if they do not want to have sex with their partners.

"Women should learn to assert their rights," she said. "They should know how to negotiate condom use. We have to strengthen education programs that fit the need of the women."

The Department of Health’s AIDS Registry showed that from January 1984 to March 2005, there have been 2,250 people recorded as positive for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS. Of this figure, 680 have progressed to full-blown AIDS.

To drum up support in the fight against AIDS, the Philippines joined the rest of the world in celebrating the 22nd International AIDS Candlelight Memorial Event yesterday.

The event, held at St. Scholastica’s College in Manila, honored people who died of AIDS. In the Philippines, AIDS has claimed the lives of 266 people since 1984.

Dr. Ma. Elena Borromeo, country coordinator of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), said more women are getting infected with HIV worldwide.

"What is alarming here is that many of them are in a monogamous relationship. They acquire the virus from their husbands," she said.

There are around 40 million HIV-positive and AIDS cases worldwide — nearly half of them are women and girls, UNAIDS records showed.

Borromeo said women and girls are more susceptible to HIV than men and boys, because of inadequate knowledge about the disease, insufficient access to methods for preventing infection, and their inability to negotiate for safer sex.

UNAIDS said women worldwide do not enjoy the same rights and access to property, education and employment as men and females are more vulnerable to sexual violence, which can accelerate the spread of HIV.

The growing number of HIV-positive women worldwide is also a result of the increasing number of male overseas workers who contract the disease.

In the Philippines, 33 percent of HIV and AIDS cases are overseas Filipino workers (OFWs). In the 1990s, migrant workers accounted for only five to 10 percent of cases.

But Borromeo warned that OFWs should not be lumped together and branded as HIV carriers: "We don’t want the OFWs to be discriminated (against). They are the ones mostly tested and that could be the reason why we are seeing an increase of cases among them."

OFWs are required to undergo a medical examination before leaving the Philippines and could undergo another one as soon as they arrive in their host countries.