Married women at higher risk of HIV

Jun 13, 2007

While HIV prevalence among young people in Uganda has gone down dramatically, married women remained at high risk of contracting the disease, Mrs. Janet Museveni said yesterday.

By Joyce Namutebi

While HIV prevalence among young people in Uganda has gone down dramatically, married women remained at high risk of contracting the disease, Mrs. Janet Museveni said yesterday.

Addressing hundreds of delegates at the 8th Commonwealth Women affairs Ministers Meeting, the first lady said advocacy efforts, including multi-media campaigns, had contributed to the sharp decline in prevalence rates among the age group 15 to 25 years.

These campaigns also helped to bring down teenage pregnancy from 43% in 1995 to 34% in 2000 and to reduce casual sex by 60% in the last 20 years.

However, adult women, especially married women, remained at the greatest risk of contracting HIV, Mrs. Museveni noted.

“The most immediate cause of women’s HIV vulnerability is their limited power to negotiate safer sex, combined with the lack of female-controlled HIV prevention methods other than the female condom,” she observed.

“The female condom has proved to be too costly for many women, is not always available and cannot always be used without the partner’s knowledge.”

Mrs. Museveni, who has been at the forefront of fighting the pandemic and caring for orphans, called upon the Commonwealth countries to help find an AIDS vaccine.

She also asked the heavily affected countries to support vaccine trials, like Uganda has been doing.

“If an AIDS vaccine is to become a reality, there is need to significantly expand the level of political support globally. Where there is significant political will, there is usually significant financial support,” she stated.

The First Lady appealed to the Commonwealth to assist Uganda in addressing the impact of conflict on women and children, especially in the North.

She called for the training of counsellors to help rehabilitate the victims of rape and mutilation, re-integrate young women in their communities and help settle unwanted babies of rape victims.

Earlier at the conference, Uganda was hailed as a ‘success story’ and an ‘interesting case study’ for bringing prevalence in pregnant women down from 18% in the early 1990s to 6% in 2005.

“This has made Uganda a subject of intense scrutiny to discover what lessons learnt can be transferred to other contexts,” said Dr. Robert Carr of the University of the West Indies in Jamaica.

He stressed that the context in which Uganda was responding to the HIV scourge was complex, considering that 32% of married women were in polygamous marriages.

Quoting from the AIDS Policy Research Centre at the University of California, San Francisco, he confirmed that adult women in Uganda were more vulnerable to HIV because of their low status, lower education levels, higher unemployment and weaker negotiating skills in relationships.

“The Government has implemented a far-reaching affirmative action programme to promote women’s political participation. However, many customary and statutory laws discriminate against women in areas of marriage, divorce and inheritance. These customs include property grabbing,” he stated.

The vulnerable position of Ugandan women was highlighted by a community-based study in Rakai. “Thirty percent of women had experienced physical threats or abuse from their current partners. 90%of women viewed beating of the wife or female partner as justifiable in some circumstances,”said Dr. Carr.

The Rakai researchers found a link between alcohol consumption and domestic violence. “Women whose partners frequently or always consumed alcohol before sex faced risks of domestic violence almost five times higher than those whose partners never drank before sex.”

Dr. Carr pointed at the particular vulnerability of girls orphaned by AIDS. “Poverty and being orphaned expose the girl child to a greater risk of HIV infection through early marriage, sexual abuse and prostitution.”

Uganda managed to turn the HIV/AIDS tide by identifying goals and developing policies that related to addressing gender inequality.

He cited promoting behaviour change among sexually active people, the reduction of mother-to-child transmission by a third by 2005, and protecting the rights of at least 50% of the families most affected by HIV/AIDS as some of the goals.

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