Filed under AIDS

UNAIDS’ new program, “Agenda for Action”, seeks to fight the spread of AIDS by advancing women’s rights and empowerment. Read about it here.

UNDP highlight that, “AIDS is the leading cause of death  among women of reproductive age (15-49) worldwide.” As UNDP Administrator Helen Clarke notes,

“We have to see the promotion of women’s rights as intricately, intimately and intrinsically linked with combating the HIV/AIDS epidemic… If we can’t deal with this fundamental issue of the status of women, how do we effectively combat the spread of this epidemic?”

This new initiative will:

• support leadership development for HIV positive women and girls in 30 countries
• support positive women’s networks being fully involved and reporting on the Millennium Development Goals
• encourage countries to put HIV reporting into their reporting under the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)
• initiate “know your rights” campaigns focusing on the rights of women and girls in a number of countries

Giving What We Can’s research into AIDS interventions found that,

“Education appears to be the most effective way to reduce the number of people will die from HIV/AIDS”

“It would cost $1000 to extend one HIV-sufferer’s life for two years through antiretroviral therapy… But the same $1000 could extend people’s lives by a total of about 950 years if spent on preventing the spread of the disease through mass media HIV/AIDS education”

See here for Giving What We Can’s HIV/AIDS research, which includes a helpful chart sowing the relative cost-effectiveness of different interventions.