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Melinda Gates Calls for HIV Prevention Tools for Women at AIDS Conference

Posted on: Monday, 14 August 2006, 18:00 CDT

By CHINTA PUXLEY

TORONTO (CP) - More clinical trials are needed to develop drugs women can take to prevent HIV/AIDS, philanthropist Melinda Gates said Monday, as new figures revealed Canadian women are suffering from the disease at a growing rate.

Gates, wife of Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, told the International AIDS Conference in Toronto that women need the power to avoid becoming infected.

Microbicides - an odourless, clear gel women use vaginally - and oral prevention drugs could "break the back of this disease," she said during a panel discussion entitled, Women at the Frontline in the AIDS Response.

Some clinical trials are underway but she said they aren't moving fast enough to help women in developing countries, who can't protect themselves against infected partners who don't use condoms.

"The truth is we need an even more powerful microbicide than what's in trial today," said Gates, who together with her husband gave a keynote address to open the conference and recently announced $500 million US in funding to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

"And a lot of trials, both in microbicides and an oral prevention drug ... have been stopped. And so we need to have more trial sites created. We need more communities involved. We need more people willing to come forward to participate in trials."

Gates's call to action came as details of a new study by the Canadian Institute for Health Information were released, showing the percentage of women hospitalized with HIV/AIDS-related illnesses in Canada has doubled in the last decade to represent 22 per cent of all cases.

Most of the patients hospitalized with HIV/AIDS-related illnesses are still men, CIHI said in a release, but female patients are on the rise.

Experts at the conference, which has drawn some 20,000 delegates from around the world, are warning about the "feminization" of HIV/AIDS.

Worldwide, almost 50 per cent of all HIV positive adults are women over 15 years old.

Gates said many are sex trade workers who are trying to support their families and can't control whether their clients use a condom.

Too many governments are ignoring these women, she said.

"It's a group that's part of society," Gates said to applause. "If we don't acknowledge that, we can't begin to tackle the problem,"

Still, some say it's not strangers - but rather spouses - that pose the greatest risk to women. Nafis Sadik, UN special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Asia-Pacific, said women often get married without knowing anything about sexual health.

Once married, she said they are virtually powerless.

"Marriage is a licence to do what you want with your wife," Sadik said, adding a woman can still be punished for refusing to sleep with her husband. "Policy makers are more afraid of women having control over their own sexuality than they are of AIDS."

Musa (Queen) Njoko, a jazz artist and HIV activist in her native South Africa, said it is up to women to take the lead in fighting the disease.

"We need no longer continue having our lives controlled by other people," said Njoko, one of the first women and the first recording artist to disclose her HIV-positive status in South Africa. "It's our time. It's our lives. Let's fight for our survival. Let us fight for the future of our children."

Earlier Monday, more than a thousand people from around the world took part in a march and rally near the conference site to demand urgent action for women and girls affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Louise Binder, co-founder of the Blueprint for Action on Women and Girls and HIV/AIDS, said countries need to ensure women have adequate housing, good education and equal rights if they are going to prevent the spread of the disease.

"Until we can get women to the same place as men, we don't have the power to prevent (HIV/AIDS)," she said.

Source: Canadian Press

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