Stamping out Gender Discrimination to Prevent HIV/AIDS

Stamping out Gender Discrimination to Prevent HIV/AIDS

Anirudha Alam


Gender discrimination saps social consistency jeopardizing health and educational development. It is increasingly recognized as a key factor that makes women gravely vulnerable to AIDS and STIs (Sexually Transmitted Infections). Improving and intensifying poverty reduction strategies pragmatically, overall development programs should be en-gendered. Otherwise development achievements may be endangered failing to contain epidemic.

Approximately 17.7 million women were living with HIV/AIDS in 2006 all over the world. Multiple vulnerabilities like social, cultural, economical and biological factors intertwined as a vicious circle may make prevalence sky-high anytime among women in the developing countries of Asia. So we have to raise a clarion call on combating the spread of epidemic through ensuring gender equality.

Gender discrimination promotes unequal access to resources and opportunities, sexual violence, practice of unprotected sex, women trafficking and women’s paltry representation and participation in social development activities. All of this result in power disparities that characterize personal relationships between male and female undermine the development of not only women but also a nation to a great extent. In this context, capitalizing on capacity building initiatives for vulnerable women encompassing sensitization, training & orientation, exchanging information, experience & views and networking may play an important role to reduce the incidents of HIV as a whole.

Having significant and multifaceted impact on public health, education, technology, business and administration sector as well as on demography, household, macro economy and society on a great scale, HIV/AIDS continues to spread in Asia and the Pacific. Comprehensive HIV/AIDS prevention programs have been initiated successfully in some countries. Nonetheless several grave factors like illiteracy, gender inequality, unprotected extra marital sexual behavior, increasing use of intravenous drugs, isolation from generic health care services as well as lack of outreach treatment and care services are contributing to the spread of HIV/AIDS gradually from most-at-risk population to the general population. As a result, the number of HIV infections among women is increasing day by day. This is why focusing very appropriately and timely on the importance of women empowerment, policy makers should be made gender sensitized necessarily.

Adopting an inter-sectoral approach to gender equality and establishing links between gender, development and HIV/AIDS, vulnerable nations have to have technical supports to confront epidemic. There is no alternative to integrate gender into such major development areas as good governance, poverty alleviation, disaster management & recovery, sustainable environment promotion, information & development communication (IDC) as well as HIV/AIDS prevention.

Women are mostly vulnerable to HIV/AIDS due to their inherited conservative behavior, beliefs in superstitions and religious dogmas. They are deprived of enjoying their minimal rights as well. Consequently they are affected by gender discrimination severely. A recent survey initiated by Rainbow Nari O Shishu Kallayan Foundation showed that only 22% young women (15-25 years) had heard of HIV/AIDS and do not know how to protect themselves from AIDS/STIs.

HIV/AIDS epidemic is mounting all over the world especially in the developing countries being the greatest impediment to human development. Young girls and women are greatly vulnerable due to their lack of power and means to protect themselves from practice of unsafe sex and ignorance as regards reproductive health. Through a gender lens, multisectoral development strategies should be both pro-poor and pro-women supporting the integration of HIV/AIDS prevention into the development planning activities. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are intended to halve extreme poverty and hunger by 2015. So in the course of reducing poverty, promotion of gender equitable behaviors through gender awareness will be able to contribute to reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS as per the desired achievement .



Anirudha Alam
Deputy Director (Information & Development Communication) & Trainer
BEES (Bangladesh Extension Education Services)
183, Lane 2, Eastern Road, New DOHS
Mohakhali, Dhaka 1206
Bangladesh.
Website: www.newsletter.com.bd/anirudha
Phone: 01718342876, 9889732, 9889733 (office), 8050514 (res.)
E-mail: anirudhaalam@yahoo.com

Ref: UNDP, UNESCO, World Bank

Risky Behavior Fuels Vulnerability to HIV/AIDS in Low Prevalence Country

Risky Behavior Fuels Vulnerability
to HIV/AIDS in Low Prevalence Country

Anirudha Alam


Countries like Bangladesh where spread of HIV/AIDS is relatively slow nowadays have a window of opportunity to avoid more serious epidemics. Comprehensive access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support in low prevalence countries should be ensured through strengthening integrated HIV/AIDS prevention programs and projects. In this regard, highlighting the priorities of an effective response to the epidemic, it is very much essential to take the exclusive scope to keep HIV at bay. It should be recognized that to scale up prevention, treatment, care and support is a vital right for all.

Encompassing enhanced access to inclusive treatment and prevention programs, significant developments have been found in recent years in global efforts to address the HIV/AIDS epidemic. But due to practicing risky behavior, the number of people living with HIV is increasing consecutively. Diminution of national HIV prevalence is being brought about in some sub-Saharan African countries, though this kind of trend is neither remarkable nor long-lasting satisfactorily.

If there is low prevalence of HIV in a country it does not indicate that HIV prevention is low priority. Comprehensive access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support in low prevalence countries may be promoted through developing a holistic and integrated national strategy plan with far-seeing and pragmatic targets for being achieved by 2010. To contain the spread of HIV epidemic, innovative HIV/AIDS prevention programs/projects have to be initiated complementing government efforts to orchestrate national strategic plan successfully through effective partnership as a whole.

Ensuring the involvement of civil society, NGOs, young people, religious leader as well as people living with HIV, a potential national AIDS coordinating authority comes in for maintaining profound linkages between national strategic plans and such other relevant programs as tuberculosis, sexual transmitted infection, reproductive health, general health care and so on. There is no alternative to mobilize human resources through improved management and capacity building for all aspects of HIV and AIDS prevention.

Greater availability of injectable drugs, stigma and discrimination towards people infected or affected by HIV/AIDS, women trafficking, polygamy and early marriage may trigger epidemics on a large scale. Countries with low levels of HIV infection need sufficient funding, challenging and well-defined targets, and much-admired political and cultural commitment as well as community based well-planned social mobilization to strengthen support for national HIV/AIDS prevention programs. With an effective focus on prevention , enough financial and technical support have to be ensured to implement national strategic plans increasing significant participatory involvement in program design, implementation, advocacy and monitoring & evaluation.

In the context of developing countries, drug use is mostly a hidden subculture in the urban communities. It is estimated that 85% young people addicted in injecting regularly are severely vulnerable to ill health, HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C in Bangladesh. Therefore a great urgency exists to ensure availability of health care services which protect young drug users from contracting blood-borne viruses all along the country. Rainbow Nari O Shishu Kallyan Foundation found that HIV prevalence among adolescent girls involved in such risky behavior as using drugs is higher than 60% in urban and suburban areas of Bangladesh. They must have access to health and social care services which provide support to change their high risk behavior and reduce the vulnerability caused by transmission of HIV/AIDS.

Injecting drug use, unprotected paid sex as well as unprotected sex between men considered as the centrality of high-risk behavior are fueling the skyrocketing spread of HIV/AIDS in Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America. Two in three (67%) prevalent HIV infections in 2005 were caused by drug abuse in central Asia and Eastern Europe. Near about 13% of HIV infections was due to use of non-sterile injecting drug use equipment among sex workers and their clients in the same countries. So the countries with low levels of HIV infections have to improve surveillance systems that they may better understand the factors identifying obstacles and opportunities for scaling up national HIV prevention, treatment, care and support efforts.


Anirudha Alam
Deputy Director (Information & Development Communication) & Trainer
BEES (Bangladesh Extension Education Services)
183, Lane 2, Eastern Road, New DOHS
Mohakhali, Dhaka 1206
Bangladesh.
Website: www.newsletter.com.bd/anirudha
Phone: 01718342876, 9889732, 9889733 (office), 8050514 (res.)
E-mail: anirudhaalam@yahoo.com

Ref: UNAIDS, UNESCO, FHI

AIDS Prevention Spotlighted by Gender Mainstreaming

AIDS Prevention Spotlighted
by Gender Mainstreaming

Anirudha Alam

Spread of HIV/AIDS results in risk of losing forms of social and economic protection. There is no doubt that onslaught of HIV/AIDS is closely associated with gender inequality and poor respect for the rights of women. So to mitigate the multiple impacts of epidemic, gender mainstreaming should be significantly integrated into HIV/AIDS prevention programs. Eventually, HIV prevention and impact mitigation policy will be able to make the realization of gender equality one of the most important strategies.

Gender mainstreaming for HIV/AIDS is to ensure gender equality in all policies, programs and activities that it would be possible to keep the epidemic in bay. It is the most efficient and equitable means for using existing resources with a view to combating HIV/AIDS internalizing need based approach. At a rough estimate since the beginning of the epidemic, over 10 million women have died from HIV/AIDS-resulted illness. 48 per cent of adults newly affected by HIV/AIDS in 2001 were certainly women. The fact that lack of gender mainstreaming along with domination of social stigma and discrimination creates a tremendous barrier to women making them unable to adopt HIV risk-reducing behavior.

Social stigma and gender discrimination engulf series of possibilities to reduce vulnerability to HIV/AIDS successively. The enhanced poverty and developmental decline nourished by gender inequality may make women and girls engaged in risky sexual behavior in lieu of getting money, food and other facilities. Having lack of enough access to quality treatment and care, then they fall into enormous vulnerability to sexually transmitted diseases (STIs) one after another.

As per the finding of Rainbow Nari O Shishu Kallyan Foundation, 95 per cent adolescent girls of Bangladesh are drastically vulnerable to HIV/AIDS because of their paltry access to necessary information for protecting their reproductive health. Due to their poverty at the levels of awareness, skill, knowledge, attitude and practice all along, they are being more vulnerable consecutively. When they are enough adult they are not able to ensure their role as potential manpower in planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating pro-gender programs and projects.

Considering all the situations related to sexual behavior, social attitudes and praxis, financial empowerment and so on, there are in-depth differences between men’s and women’s access to information, prevention, treatment and care-giving supports. It is much more common in all cultures that commitments for guiding sexual behavior and sexual health are being threatened by gender discrimination. If women and girls have not qualitative reproductive health literacy HIV/AIDS will be turned into as the greatest social problem in developing countries. According to the findings of UNAIDS, as of December 2000, ninety five per cent of all AIDS cases have occurred in developing countries.

Through promoting, facilitating and supporting the implementation of gender mainstreaming, AIDS prevention should be brought about under the spotlight of women empowerment. Gender mainstreaming and women empowerment are obviously complementary strategies. So the strategy of gender mainstreaming within HIV/AIDS prevention should be outlined that women empowerment is ensured.


Anirudha Alam
Deputy Director (Information & Development Communication) & Trainer
BEES (Bangladesh Extension Education Services)
183, Lane 2, Eastern Road, New DOHS
Mohakhali, Dhaka 1206
Bangladesh.
Website: www.newsletter.com.bd/anirudha
Phone: 01718342876, 9889732, 9889733 (office), 8050514 (res.)
E-mail: anirudhaalam@yahoo.com

Ref: UNAIDS, World Bank, Commonwealth Secretariat, UNESCO

AIDS Mushrooms through Gender-based Violence and Discrimination

AIDS Mushrooms through
Gender-based Violence and Discrimination

Anirudha Alam

The conventional gender roles that underpin sexual inequality and violence are entrenched by dyed-in-the-wool social norms. So women are always in the vicious circle of vulnerability to HIV/AIDS. It is an essential fact that gender-based violence is a key factor in increasing women’s risk of contracting the virus skyward.

Social discrimination engenders several factors associated with women’s subordinate position that it results in multidimensional likelihood of HIV infection. What’s more! Capitalizing on this discrimination, gender-based violence is the leading route of all vulnerabilities. Mostly these are the consequences of harmful traditional practices which put women at higher risk and socio-economic prejudices which undermine women’s life skills of protecting themselves.

A study executed by the Asia Pacific Network of People Living with HIV (APN+) identified some HIV-related issues in which women suffered extensively from higher levels of discrimination than man. The issues are related to being ridiculed and insulted, physically assaulted, removed from or asked to leave a public establishment, forced to change place of residence, excluded from social function, advised not to have a child after being diagnosed as HIV-positive and suffering exclusion by family members as well as losing financial support from family members. Another in-depth study in three African countries found that both of men and women are to be stigmatized become of breaking sexual norms. But the society led by exclusive male hegemony put the blame on women more easily.

The factors entwined with poverty, illiteracy, female genital mutilation, polygamy, wife inheritance, rape by intimate partners, early marriage, having multiple sex partners, minimal access to productive resources, forced sterilization, prostitution, sexual harassment and assault at work-places as well as different conflict situations make women face an epidemic of violence every day. It is realized that women are two to four times more vulnerable to HIV/AIDS during unprotect sexual intercourse than men. In various parts of the world, rape and sexual violence are supposed to be weapon of war. In view of that, gender-based violence is an all-too-common feature of coeval conflicts. It is used to attribute a moral code based on rigorously and thoroughly differentiated roles for male and female. For instance, women victimized by gender-based violence are among the casualties of the continuing internal conflict in Colombia on a great scale.

Realization of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all is an essential element in a global response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic through preventing stigma and respective discrimination against people infected and affected by HIV/AIDS. Armed conflicts and natural disasters always add extra dimension to discrimination oriented violence. So role of cultural, family, ethical and religious factors should be gender sensitized internalizing right-based approach in combating endemic and ensuring treatment, care and support.

As per the findings of the research entitled ‘Role of Safe Sexual Practices Reduce Gender-based Violence’ conducted by Rainbow Nari O Shishu Kallyan Foundation in 2006, ABC – Abstain (from sexual intercourse), Be faithful (to one sexual partner) and use Condom – approach has a great impact to protect the vulnerable women stigmatized often for their risky behavior. It has the potential comprehensively to contribute to protection from exposure to HIV/AIDS. This approach is the stepping stone to reducing gender based violence as a whole.

Bearing in mind empowering women is essential for reducing vulnerability, their social security and economic opportunities have to be ensured. Discrimination, unequal property and inheritance laws and petty access to knowledge confine women’s income-earning possibilities. Thus inequality between male and female thrives on enhancing the means of violence. This is why in the aspect of preventing HIV/AIDS, there is no alternative of making women self-reliance that they would be able to protect them from onslaught of discriminations and gender-based violence.

Anirudha Alam
Deputy Director (Information & Development Communication) & Trainer
BEES (Bangladesh Extension Education Services)
183, Lane 2, Eastern Road, New DOHS
Mohakhali, Dhaka 1206
Bangladesh.
Website: www.newsletter.com.bd/anirudha
Phone: +8801718342876, +88029889732, +88029889733 (office), +88028050514 (res.)
E-mail: anirudhaalam@yahoo.com

Ref: UNAIDS, World Bank, UNFPA, UNESCO

Some Words on Anirudha Alam

Anirudha Alam is a prominent human resource development specialist and trainer. At present he is working in a national NGO and community based organization named BEES (Bangladesh Extension Education Services) as a Deputy Director (Information & Development Communication) and Trainer. He is an Executive Board Member of Bangladesh Project Management Institute (BPMI) as well. He writes and edits more than forty books and a good number of articles on various issues like human resource development, women empowerment, human rights, education awareness, social development, income generating activities, environment awareness, reproductive health, HIV/AIDS awareness, juvenile literature, short stories and so on. His noteworthy books are Kulsums and Karims (a collection of success stories of disadvantaged people of Bangladesh), Kulsums (a collection of success stories of disadvantaged & destitute women of Bangladesh), The Reflections (a collection of posters on literacy & education of Bangladesh), Towards a New Hope, Social Assistance Message Collection, Social Assistance Advocacy Manual, Eaisab Rat Din (a collection of juvenile poems), Du Sha Bachharer Sera Bangla Kishor Galapa (a collection of juvenile Bengali stories of two hundred years) etc.

Website: www.newsletter.com.bd/anirudha