Women, girls should be focus of AIDS fight
Re “Coming up short on AIDS,” editorial, May 31
Your editorial provides several accurate explanations for the failed global AIDS response, but you miss one critical reason. As the UNAIDS report acknowledges, women and girls bear an increasingly disproportionate HIV/AIDS burden. Yet policies and resources have not changed to account for that fact.
Governments and donors must strengthen services women already use, through which we can best reach them and their families -- sexual and reproductive health services. Comprehensive sex education must be available to all boys and girls. Finally, women must be at the policy table -- they know their own realities best, and they deserve to help set the agenda. Prevention of HIV/AIDS must be for all, by all. When women and girls prosper, so do families, communities and countries.
ADRIENNE GERMAIN
President, International Women’s
Health Coalition
New York
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