Women Should Benefit Extra Care against HIV/AIDS
[ Bwampamye Bernard]
Currently, HIV/AIDS has become the source of the uppermost terror in the world, especially in Africa South of the Sahara. The UNAIDS 2004 Report on the global AIDS epidemic shows that more than 40 million people are living with HIV/AIDS.
In 1999, the UNAIDS study showed that about 1.7 million young people in Africa got infected with HIV every year, whereas 23.3 million of people in Sub-Saharan Africa are in agony, South and Southeast Asia with 6 million people living with HIV/AIDS.
In fact, the HIV/AIDS has no selection as it cuts across the gender boundaries. However, the most vulnerable are particularly women and children who are often under the strains of physical, cultural and social settings.
Most often, the transmission of AIDS to women and children is a consequence of domestic and sexual violence. Women have practically no access to safe sex, while they are always victimized by the lack of insufficient information and services for prevention and treatment.
A special attention must be directed to children as the future generation, and in some way the victims of household misbehaviour. Several studies have revealed that children get AIDS from their mothers.
The consequences of AIDS go beyond the issue of a woman’s health to affect her role as a mother, a wife, to the contribution of the economic support of family. Women, as multi-roles players in our societies should be secured the highest standards of health throughout their life cycle.
Education on reproductive health should be the concern of actual generations in an effort to assure a complete physical, mental and social well-being for women. This should go in tandem with mothers to access to better AIDS treatment and prevention.
Additionally, reproductive health education should not only go with the prevention HIV/DAIS, but also with the treatment of all other Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs).
The extra care to women should be perceived as a unique service that is to be rendered in the aim of building a better opportunity for the young generations.