Winning the war against AIDS: why it is both a cash and gender issue

Date: 02/12/04

Two MEPs discuss viable strategies in the fight against a killer disease that claims around 8,000 lives every day

We need a global strategy to stop the trafficking of women, many of whom carry the AIDS virus, writes Lissy Gröner

SINCE 11 September 2001 the world has focused on the fight against terror and billions of US dollars have been spent on a huge military machinery, which has caused even more death.

We should be fighting another battle - the one against HIV/AIDS - with a special focus on women.

Since the discovery of the AIDS pandemic in the 1980s, the number of people dying has been increasing, especially in the southern hemisphere.

The figures are alarming. Last year 3 million infected people died. That adds up to around 8,000 deaths every day. In 2003, 5m new HIV victims were officially registered, nearly 14,000 per day. The real number may be even higher.

This humanitarian catastrophe needs to be stopped as quickly as possible. Our task should appear in bold and black capital letters in the head and conscience of everyone in the world: “Stop the AIDS pandemic through sensibilization, education and the empowerment of women.”

The poorest and weakest around the world are affected by HIV/AIDS: 90% of the 40m people infected live in developing countries. 50% of all adults living with HIV are women, while in sub-Saharan Africa, women represent almost 60% of those living with the virus. Infection rates are rising dramatically.

Women and girls are often more vulnerable to HIV infection than men because of social, political and economical issues. Globally speaking they are 2.5 times more susceptible to HIV than their male counterparts. First of all this is a matter of education. Secondly, women possess neither access to hygiene nor to basic health services and suffer from inadequate knowledge about AIDS, insufficient access to HIV prevention services, the inability to negotiate safer sex and from a lack of female-controlled HIV prevention methods, such as microbicides.

And still we need more emphasis on distribution of condoms free of charge everywhere, even in remote areas.

Another phenomenon is the worldwide gender-based violence against women. We women invite our male counterparts to join our fight against all forms of violence. We urge the secretary-general of the United Nations to develop a global strategy for eradication of trafficking in women and girls who are at the highest risk of being infected by HIV and then spread the disease. The International Organization on Migration estimates that 500,000 women are trafficked every year into the EU.

We hear the same terrible figures from African and Asian women - and the regions to which many European customers of sex services travel. No country should close its borders to victims. They must guarantee asylum for trafficked women and girls.

The increasing number of HIV-infections in eastern Europe is terrifying. The situation is especially complex in Russia, Ukraine and in Estonia. In these countries 1% of the adult population is already HIV-positive and the virus continues to spread almost unhindered in Belarus, in Moldova and in Kazakhstan. And the epidemic can easily be transmitted into neighbour states by tourist traffic.

The international community and the international agencies need a clear framework upon which to base policies, programmes and development assistance for achieving a halt to the worldwide AIDS pandemic, on the basis of gender mainstreaming.

We - the Social Democrats in the European Parliament - will ensure that users of sexual and reproductive health programmes, especially young people and people living with HIV/AIDS, are fully involved in the development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of all programmes.

Lastly, we must promote coordinated responses to HIV/AIDS. We need a strategic framework, including one broad-based multi-sectoral HIV/AIDS coordinating body, a commonly agreed system for country-level monitoring and evaluation. We must promote the maximum possible coordination with other relevant sexual and reproductive health services.

• German MEP Lissy Gröner sits on the European Parliament's committee on women's rights and gender equality where she is coordinator for the socialist group.

The European Union should stop trying to become a superpower and spend its cash on fighting diseases, argues Miroslaw Piotrowski

WORLD AIDS day evokes in our minds a disease that does not affect the large majority of us.

According to official data gathered by Poland's National Research Institute for health problems, Panstwowy Zaklad Higieny in Warsaw, between 1985 and the end of October 2004, more than 9,000 Polish citizens were diagnosed with HIV, among whom 1,500 were infected with full-blown AIDS and 712 died from the disease.

Unfortunately, the reality is more sombre. We know that it is increasingly difficult to pinpoint groups in society that are more at risk than others, as was the case when the disease was discovered 20 years ago.

Poland's public health system is largely insufficient and inadequately prepared to face the AIDS problem.

We have qualified and well-trained doctors who are renowned worldwide; yet our medical institutions are lacking modern equipment and are heavily in debt.

This deplorable situation is due not just to the former political regime, but also to the current poor management of social affairs and public health.

The solution is simple and banal: we need to inject more money into the system.

The problem facing European politics in relation to AIDS is not only money-related; it is essentially a question of setting the right priorities.

But it seems that the fight against AIDS is not considered as such for the European Union.

To tackle the issue, we could for instance consider other funding coming from new sources to finance information and prevention campaigns, as well as research, while eliminating promotion expenses for the European constitution project, for instance.

It would certainly be a win-win situation for European citizens.

The European Commission should also work harder to find solutions to problems related to man-made pollution and the frightful degradation of nature and the environment, because all these catastrophes have a global nature that affect all of us.

The thousands of civil servants working for the Commission should devote themselves entirely to this task.

One of the reasons why I, along with my colleagues from the Independents and Democrats Group, greatly mistrust the European Union in its current form, is because it does not concentrate its efforts on helping member states tackle problems that they are unable to solve by themselves.

These problems go beyond national borders and threaten people around the world, just like AIDS or the degradation of the environment.

In Poland, the greatest risk of AIDS transmission comes from the east, where the disease is infecting people at a faster pace than here [in Poland].

Since our border to the east is also that of the EU since May 2004, it would be great for Poland to benefit from extra financial support to fight against AIDS.

But, most of all, I believe that instead of speaking in vague terms about a Neighbourhood Policy, the EU should undertake concrete actions to help countries such as Ukraine and Belarus in fighting the disease.

From now on, this global scourge concerns all of us, regardless of whether we are Polish or from another nationality, European citizens or citizens from another continent, adults or children.

And I believe this is where the European Union's sole raison d'être lies or, more precisely, the European Commission's.

Instead of concentrating on attempting to build a European superpower - a goal it will never achieve - the Union should devote all of its energy and much of its money coming from all of us taxpayers to fighting plagues such as HIV and AIDS, as well as other diseases that ravage the world's population.

• Miroslaw Piotrowski is a Polish member of the European Parliament and a member of the Independents and Democrats group.

Two MEPs discuss viable strategies in the fight against a killer disease that claims around 8,000 lives every day.

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