Health Rights = Healthy Women: Halting the Feminization of AIDS

In 2006 the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS concluded: "the realization of human rights and fundamental freedom for all is essential to reduce vulnerability to HIV/AIDS". Tragically two years later those most vulnerable, specifically women and girls, continue to face widespread discrimination and deeply entrenched gender inequities that perpetuate the AIDS pandemic. Presently there are 15.4 million women worldwide living with HIV, the majority between the ages of 15-24. In sub-Saharan Africa women make up 61% of all those infected. The present international response to AIDS is failing women. Physicians for Human Rights(PHR) presents a human rights-based advocacy platform that calls for the implementation of comprehensive, evidence-based HIV prevention, care and treatment interventions that acknowledge the complex challenges faced by women and girls in accessing, attaining and maintaining health. PHR calls on the international community to provide the financial, strategic and human resources necessary to develop health systems that are founded in the belief that health rights = women's rights...thus a health system that recognizes a women's health must be considered in the broader social, economic and political context. The effective promotion of women's health must integrate HIV prevention, care and treatment with comprehensive reproductive health messaging, beyond ABC, including family planning and PMTCT plus. A health workforce that is empowered and educated to implement this delivery system is essential for success.