Women and girls targeted in anti-AIDS fight

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New York (dpa) - A United Nations conference on HIV/AIDS on Thursday emphasized the need to meet past and future promises to tackle social, cultural and economic problems encountered by women and girls living with the AIDS virus.

Half of the estimated 40 million people around the world infected by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) are female, it was reported at the conference organized as a five-year stock-taking of world efforts.

The levels of female infection have risen worldwide since 2000, and 74 per cent of all young people infected with HIV in the past five years in sub-Sahara were female.

The review showed that the high rates of female infection were caused by lack of access to education and knowledge of the epidemic, by their role as unequal partners in marriage or relationships and by their resulting lack of attention for treatment.

Former Irish President Mary Robinson helped launch a new Global Coalition on Women and AIDS while Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern presented a check for 6 million euros to the UNAIDS programmes.

"If delegates at this week's high level meeting are to make the AIDS response work better for women, they must focus on three things: money, laws and seats at the table," said Robinson, who was a former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. She was referring to equal rights of women in demanding treatment.

"At the same time, they must bear in mind that making the response work better for women is critical to getting ahead of the AIDS epidemic as a whole," she said.

The UN said AIDS has outpaced global efforts against the epidemic. Since it was discovered 25 years ago next week, the epidemic has killed 25 million people.

The UN said 4.1 million people became infected and 2.8 million died in 2005 of AIDS.

Peter Piot, director of the UNAIDS programmes, said only 11 countries have managed to achieve a 20-per-cent reduction in mother-to-child HIV transmission, a target set in 2001 by the UN conference in HIV/AIDS.

At this week's three-day session, UN officials said much had been accomplished in the past five years compared to the previous 20 years, but the advance in implementing 2001 targets has been slow.

The UN said fewer than 10 per cent of pregnant women worldwide have received an HIV test. Fewer than one in 10 HIV-positive pregnant women in low income countries had received anti-retroviral treatment in 2005 to prevent transmission to their new-born infants.

The Global Coalition on Women and AIDS called for securing women's rights through laws and policies.

Government delegates were negotiating on Thursday to compose a final declaration to wrap up the AIDS conference on Friday.

HIV patients and hundreds of civil society groups warned the UN Thursday not to weaken global targets to fight the epidemic.

"The global fight against AIDS will not succeed unless governments commit to ambitious HIV treatment and prevention targets, support human rights and embrace evidence-based HIV prevention," said an AIDS group from Nigeria.

South Africa's Treatment Action Campaign said most NGO recommendations were rejected by government negotiators.

The NGOs have been calling for greater government commitments to fight the epidemic, respect of human rights of AIDS patients and access to treatment.

The UN has designated 2010 as the target for reversing the spread of AIDS. But the current numbers have belied efforts to reduce the number of victims to the epidemic.

Each day, AIDS kills an estimated 8.500 people a day and infects 13,500 others.

Each year a total of 700,000 children become infected.