Call for new focus on women and HIV in Latin America and the Caribbean

Women represent the fastest growing segment of the population living with HIV in Latin America and the Caribbean, and new efforts are urgently needed to halt the spread of the epidemic in the female population, representatives of ten United Nations agencies said today.

Every day 150 women are infected with HIV in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the latest data from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). Between late 2002 and 2004, the number of women with HIV increased from 520,000 to 610,000 in Latin America and in the Caribbean, from 190,000 to 210,000.

The proportion of women among all adults with HIV has increased steadily in the region and now stands at 49 percent in the Caribbean and 36 percent in Latin America (see table below for country-specific rates). Worldwide, women represent nearly half of the 37.2 million adults (aged 15-49) living with HIV.

In a joint statement issued today, leaders from U.N. agencies called on policy and decision-makers in Latin America and the Caribbean to promote new cooperative efforts to address the causes that make women and girls particularly vulnerable to HIV. The U.N. leaders included the directors for Latin America and the Caribbean of UNAIDS, the International Labor Organization (ILO), the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO/WHO), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the World Bank and the World Food Programme (WFP).

Young women are 1.6 times more likely to have HIV than young men. Women and girls also know less than men about how HIV is transmitted, often because this information is denied to them.

Even when women and girls do know how to protect against the infection, they are unable to use that information because of “machismo”, widespread gender discrimination and violence. According to the U.N. experts, sexual coercion and abuse is a major factor contributing to the increasingly female face of the epidemic in the region.

In addition, in Latin America and the Caribbean, many women bear the responsibility for HIV/AIDS care in the community level. These caregivers – from young girls to grandmothers – have little control over needed resources and lack access to social structures that could provide support.