Want to seriously reduce HIV infection rates? Try this!

As HIV infection rates continue to rise in many countries and we search for ways to reduce that rate, I am amazed that nobody is pressing harder for changes, but not changes in prevention messages, but real change on a societal scale. HIV infection rates have the potential to seriously damage many countries with a high number of cases and the only way to effectively address these issues is to provide support for the most important ingredients for HIV prevention.

For 25 years we have debated on what prevention messages to send, the treatments and services to provide and the creation of needle-exchange programs and numerous other ideas to try and stem the increasing HIV infection rates. Yet through this all, far too many seem to miss the most obvious area and the potential for changing the discussion on HIV prevention and infections. It is an area that encompasses one half of our society and for far too many it condemns them to lives of untold horrors.

If you want to get serious about true HIV prevention, you need to support women’s rights, because until all women have the right of true self-protection, all the talking and programs will not change reality for hundreds of millions of women. The women to which I refer are those who live in predominately third world countries, where many women are treated not much better than the chattel they represent to their male masters. Places where women are bought sold or traded with their having little or no recourse to such atrocities.

Far too many countries limit the lives of their women and use this to label them as being incapable of running their own lives and therefore relegate them to subservient status. In these countries women are unable to actually “just say no” to sex, regardless of the promiscuity of their mates. Men are free to rut as they please and their women are expected to almost “service” them upon demand, without any ability to insist on protection from infection for either party.

So many governments and societies actively promote violence against their women and restrict their access to education that could help them make a real life for themselves and access to truth-based STD prevention information is all but nonexistent. Yet even if they had the education, there is little access, if any to the resources needed to protect their lives. Even more disgusting is that women with an education and access to prevention methods have no right to insist that their partners use such protection or insist on providing protection for the women.

It seems that many parts of the world place little value on the lives of their women, which is reflected in absence of laws protecting women, or where they might exist, they are rarely enforced or the requirement of their enforcement all but precludes any women from taking protection under the law. Of what value are laws against rape, when the victim must produce at least four male witnesses to such a brutal act? Since most, if not all men are complicit in this subrogation of their females, very few would be willing to bear witness against each other. If that were not dehumanizing enough, there are many cultures when once a women is “stained” by intercourse, forced or not, she becomes nothing more than an embarrassment to her family and friends.

There are other cultures that support the mutilation of women’s genitals and even a few societies that will actually kill their own women, based solely on the fact that she is now “damaged goods.” Someone please explain to me how such huge portions of society could not only develop but promote such horror? They appear so short sighted that they fail to see how high HIV infection rates amongst their female populations is transmitted to their children and unprotected partners and the resulting orphan rate, from those still dying from HIV is in the tens of millions.

Why bother having laws or programs that seem to exist to protect women, when they are little more than farce or window-dressing for the world? I cannot imagine that many countries do it to curry favor as these atrocities have been occurring for centuries, but now they are extracting a price that is too dear for most to bear.

HIV is cutting a wide path through every segment of society in almost every part of the world, with women and children bearing the brunt of this devastation. Imagine if some type of microbicide were developed that could kill HIV on contact? Imagine if this could be cheaply produced and distributed to the far reaches of the globe? And most promising is to imagine if such a product could be used without the knowledge of the other partner?

The term “women’s rights” encompasses so much more than just their ability to protect themselves from sexual diseases including HIV. But if we do not start providing the basic tools for women to keep themselves safe, the other goals of such rights becomes moot. So much of the world seems ready to help stem the tide of HIV infections yet far too many seem afraid to insist on the societal changes necessary to support such programs.

It always seem to fall back on the idea of equal rights for all citizens, because you can be assured that if it were the men who were experiencing such brutality the laws and administration of such would reach new levels. Except that none of that seems to happen and I am unable to understand how it can be allowed to continue.

I am perplexed at any religion that requires that one sex of its members to be subjected to such brutality by the other sex. I cannot accept that there is any religious truth in exposing unprotected women to certain death through HIV infection. Granted I am no expert in any of these foreign cultures and maybe I am naïve when I assume that basic human dignity should be a right of all of us who occupy this planet.

As with other areas of HIV there is a real need for change and not merely window-dressing. Millions upon millions of women need our help so they may dictate their own futures and protect themselves. They must have equal rights, because without them, what right would they have to any vaccine or prevention methods that might become available? Far too many women remain marginalized because of archaic laws and ideas or at the insistence of religious dogma.

Millions of women worldwide need our help, for they are prevented from displacing centuries of ill-conceived ideas regarding their rights and role in society. Too many are left defenseless to even protect their own lives and the losses that result will have real consequences in the near future. You cannot sustain any society by oppressing half of it, while orphaning an entire generation of children all due to a preventable disease.

Millions of women need our help to keep them safe and the lack of their screams is deafening.