Women and Girls HIV & AIDS Awareness Day 2008

March 10 is National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. Awareness comes with education. Comprehensive sex education should be at the core of prevention efforts. The CDC estimates that about 13 percent of the persons diagnosed with HIV in 2004 were young people, aged 13-24. According to the New York State AIDS Advisory Council, 48 percent of New York teenagers newly diagnosed with HIV from 2001 to 2003 were female. Clearly we cannot continue to ignore the fact that nearly half of high school students have had sexual intercourse, and, as per CDC surveillance data, 34% of sexually active high school students did not use a condom at their last sexual encounter.

Despite these alarming rates, President Bush’s proposed budget for 2009 includes $191 million for abstinence-only programs, an increase of approximately 17%. Governors around the country are opting out of this funding in favor of developing medically accurate, age-appropriate comprehensive sex education programs that are not driven by political ideology. Doing so is in step with public opinion. A 2004 poll by Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, the Kaiser Family Foundation, and National Public Radio found that 77 percent of Americans believe that giving teens information about how to obtain and use condoms makes it more likely that teens will practice safe sex now or in the future. The study found further that a mere 7 percent of Americans say sex education should not be taught in schools.

Human rights principles dictate that all people should have the ability to practice safe sex. Yet many women do not feel safe insisting upon condom use by a sexual partner. Women need an effective form of protection that is within their control. Microbicides offer the promise of a women-controlled form of HIV prevention that would be available in gel, cream, or other form. The federal government must increase funding for microbicide research and development until a microbicide product is available to women and girls across the country and around the world.

Finally, women and girls, and their peers and sexual partners, must get tested and know their HIV status. Commitment in a relationship is not a reliable determinant of insulation from HIV. The prevalence of HIV warrants that all sexual actors should assume risk in every encounter. Testing is the only way to assess true risk. Similarly, doctors and medical providers should encourage all patients, regardless of demographics, or apparent risk categorization, to be tested for HIV. The chain of infection will only be broken when women have full knowledge, both of immediate and hypothetical risk, as well as knowledge of and access to prevention tools to eliminate risk.