More Women Getting Aids

Dying in record numbers: Activists

by Kevin Connor, Sun Media, 3 Dec 2008

Women and girls are dying of AIDS in record numbers in Canada and many contracted the disease within their marriage, a World AIDS Day meeting heard yesterday.

In Canada, in 2006, women represented 28% of positive tests for HIV/AIDS, the highest level ever. Women accounted for a quarter of the 62,5461 cases in Canada.

Females aged 15 to 29 represented 45% of all the HIV positive tests from 2001 to 2006. The primary exposure was through heterosexual contact, which has increased from 50% from 1985 to 2000 to 61% in 2006.

"The epidemic continues to be an increasingly feminized, gender-biased epidemic. Many of these women are infected within their marriages. Others are infected because poverty and violence make it impossible to negotiate safer sex or other risk reduction practices," said Toronto AIDS activist Loiuse Binder, diagnosed with HIV in 1993.

"In Canada and around the world, sexual violence against women, both in and outside the home is spreading HIV. Events in the news today tell that story graphically."

More education based on prevention and aimed at women is what is needed, said Irene Masinde, chairman of Voices of Positive Women.

"We must better support HIV-positive women, young women and girls, and we must work together to end the stigma and discrimination that prevent their access to testing, treatment, care and support," Masinde said.

The province said yesterday that it will increase HIV/AIDS funds by $1.7 million to a total of $33.7 million in 2008 and 2009.

"Ontario continues to support the many thousand Ontarians who live with HIV and AIDS," said David Caplan, minister of health and long-term care.

HIV/AIDS has touched the lives of most people, said Kerri Sakamoto, the Toronto World AIDS event's keynote speaker.

"It is not just about fighting a deadly disease, it's also about changing the conditions that allow it to spread to women and girls all over the world," Sakamoto said.