Inequalities are affecting efforts towards the eradication of the HIV and AIDS epidemic, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) has said.

“Urgent action is needed to tackle inequalities in order to get the AIDS response on track,” UNAIDS stated in a press statement released today (November 29, 2022).

According to UNAIDS, the AIDS response is in danger with the rising new infections and continuing deaths in many parts of the World.

Cynthia Lungu, the health program manager at Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa, said dangerous inequalities unpack the impact on the AIDS response on gender inequalities, inequalities faced by key populations, and inequalities between children and adults.

She stressed that financial constraints are making it more difficult to address those inequalities.

Lungu noted that the effects of gender inequalities result in women and girls continuing to be disproportionately affected by HIV, accounting for 63% of the region’s new HIV infections in 2021 and 66% of new HIV infections in South Africa.

“The world will not be able to defeat AIDS while reinforcing patriarchy,” said UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima, who emphasized the need to address the intersecting inequalities women face.

She said risky transactional and intergenerational relationships, economic vulnerability, harmful socio-cultural norms including child marriages, gender-based violence and sexual gender-based violence, are some of the factors fueling the spread of HIV amongst girls in Eastern and Southern Africa.

“The driving factor is power. One study showed that enabling girls to stay in school until they complete secondary education reduces their vulnerability to HIV infection by up to 50%,” Byanyima stated.

“By interrupting the power dynamics, policies can reduce girls’ vulnerability to HIV,” UNAIDS Regional Director for eastern and southern Africa, Anne Githuku-Shongwe, said.

She said multi-sectoral collaboration is critical to ensuring packages such as Education Plus are a success in making Adolescent Girls and Young Women (AGYW) strong, safe, and empowered.

“It is important that we collaborate to tackle policy advocacy and all challenges faced by adolescent girls and young women in a systematically coordinated manner. Discrimination, stigmatisation and criminalisation of key populations are costing lives and preventing the world from achieving agreed AIDS targets,” Githuku-Shongwe noted.

She said the budgets need to prioritize the health and well-being of all people, especially vulnerable populations that are most affected by HIV-related inequalities.

“Fiscal space for health investments in low- and middle-income countries needs to be expanded, including through substantial debt cancellation and through progressive taxation. Ending AIDS is far less expensive than not ending AIDS,” she said.