In today’s news from the Bloomberg School of Public
Health in celebration of Global Health Day and Women’s History Month
In observance of Women's History Month,
there is much progress to mark for women and HIV/AIDS in America since the
emergence of the epidemic three decades ago. Recently the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that HIV diagnoses among females in the
United States declined by 49 percent from 2002 to 2011. Additionally, as a
result of effective treatment of HIV-positive pregnant women, mother-to-child
transmission of HIV has been virtually eliminated in the U.S.
This progress is no small accomplishment,
considering the fact that in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, the
scientific and medical community failed to recognize women as a target
population for research, and they were excluded from clinical trials of
HIV/AIDS medications and preventive interventions. This omission proved to be a
major public health oversight, and led to a rapid rise in the number of HIV
cases among women, who contracted the disease primarily through heterosexual
sex. Today, women account for one in four of the 1.2 million people living with
HIV in America.
In the U.S., there are striking racial and
geographic disparities in new HIV infections and outcomes. While African
American women represent just 13 percent of the female population, they
constitute 64 percent of new HIV infections and are 14 times more likely to die
from AIDS-related causes than white women.
HIV
infections are also concentrated in urban areas, such as Washington, D.C.,
where 1.6 percent of women are HIV positive, a prevalence that is higher than
for females living in Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, and
Liberia.
In addition to being more biologically
susceptible to HIV infection than heterosexual men, women's vulnerability to
HIV is also driven by social and economic factors. Poverty, sexism, stigma,
discrimination, and violence increase risk for infection and are among the many
structural barriers that prevent women from getting the information and
services they need to prevent HIV or to seek proper care if they are HIV positive.
By
Susan J. Blumenthal, M.D., and Jennifer A. Sherwood, M.S.P.H