Ian McKnight, Executive Director of Jamaica AIDS Support (left) addresses health care, gender and development officials during yesterday's satellite conference on Women and HIV/AIDS, the second of four interactive dialogues on HIV/AIDS and related issues. To his right is Hope Ramsay, Programmes Director, Centre for HIV/AIDS Research, Education and Services (CHARES). - Michael Sloley /Freelance Photographer HEALTH OFFICIALS are seeing some improvement in the status of women but say they are still worried about the extent to which socio-economic conditions and cultural practices are driving up the HIV infection rate among women.
This was outlined during the second in a series of four satellite conferences on HIV/AIDS held yesterday at the auditorium of the United States Embassy's Office of Public Affairs, Oxford Road, Kingston.
The two-hour session, entitled "Women and HIV/AIDS", was aimed at examining how the illness affected women and increasing dialogue on the subject between professionals in the US capital, Washington, D.C., Jamaica, Port Au Prince, Haiti and N'Djemena, Chad in Africa.
Panellists and audience members expressed concern that efforts to prevent the further spread of HIV/AIDS were being undermined by gender inequalities including many women's dependence on men, cultural beliefs and practices, low literacy rates in some countries, the inability of many women to get their partners to agree to use condoms in relationships, sexual violence and other issues.
Several recommendations were made including a multi-pronged approach to the issue via partnerships between media, NGOs, Government and private sector and community based organisations (CBOs).
They called for more mentors and strong role models for young people and a change in cultural practices, which still undermine preventative messages stressed by health care officials and expose more persons to the virus. Locally, about 20,000 persons are estimated to be infected with HIV/AIDS. About 8,700 of them are reportedly women.
"Some of the things that we are seeing now is that our 12-year-olds, our younger children in certain communities are seeing children their own age or children a little older than themselves having children and so that is what they want to do too," explained National AIDS Committee co-ordinator, Verity Rushton.
High income and status also comes if the women have children for a community leader or so-called don, she told audience members.
Women and girls need to be educated, empowered and given some economic means to be independent, stressed Washington DC panellists including Juanita Simms while local panellists, among them Gleaner reporter, Trudy Simpson, urged health care, gender and development officials to include partners, friends and others who influence women in HIV/AIDS' dialogues.
Dr. Veronica D. Jenkins, Medical Director of the Family and Medical Counselling Service (FMCS) in Washington, D.C, said she was already doing this through programmes such as "sex parties" in which women, including those with HIV, were invited into her free clinic.
For her part, Technical Advisor, Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV/AIDS, USAID, Dr. Amanda Gibbons, urged organisations and journalists to keep raising the issue and joined her colleagues in stating that countries needed to find creative ways to spread prevention messages, keep HIV-positive women alive longer and their family units together and to change behaviour which puts groups at risk.
Local panellists reported seeing some improvements in how women were protecting themselves although some expressed frustration that many women were still not seeing themselves as being at risk.
Local panellists, Hope Ramsey, programmes director of the centre for HIV/AIDS research, education and services (CHARES) and Ian McKnight, executive director of Jamaica AIDS Support (JAS), said the female condom was gaining in popularity.
