The Search for Women-Driven Solutions to HIV/AIDS

Congratulations to the city of DC, which recently became the first in the nation to distribute free female condoms -- a move that, whether intentional or not, closely coincides with today's celebration of International Women's Day. It's a development that comes as an "official acknowledgment of the futility of relying solely on the use of men's condoms," which D.C. has distributed for nearly a decade, says the Washington Post.

And this International Women's Day, the city isn't alone in looking beyond men for solutions to the HIV/AIDS crisis.

There's a gloomy oeuvre out there that chronicles how women have been especially badly hit by the pandemic. In Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, women comprise 60% of the population living with HIV, and in certain regions, young women are three times as likely to be infected with HIV as young men. The disease is the biggest killer of women of reproductive age around the globe, and violence and power differentials are a key issue: as the UN reports, up to 70% of women around the globe have been forced into having unprotected sex.

But on International Women's Day, at least some campaigners are using the moment to pay a tribute to one global health development that could help change those statistics: microbicides.

Microbicides -- which also go by their catchier handle, the "molecular condom" -- offer the prospect of one tool to help empower women in fighting the disease. In brief, proposed molecular condoms under development would help block the transmission of HIV through the pre-coitus application of a gel, cream or vaginal ring. (For a fuller discussion of how one model would work, check out a Science Daily discussion here.) Though the product wouldn't replace the need for condoms, it'd afford women the power to independently give themselves greater protection.

Much-hyped in the 1990s, microbicides have long raised and dashed campaigners' hopes. Some early prototypes, for example, found that the product actually made it more likely a woman would become infected. But recent experiments presented at last month's Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections present the use of HIV/AIDS drugs as an advancement that could help make gels genuinely effective.

Since the last International Women's Day, we've seen many more such signs of hope -- all of which represent the fact that as UNAIDS executive director Michel Sidibe puts it, "Women and girls are not victims, they are the driving force that brings about social transformation."

But while that might be the case, governments have been slow to absorb the fact. In 2008, for example, just 52% of countries reporting to the UN General Assembly included budgeted support for HIV/AIDS programs targeting women. Even as this year's International Women's Day marks a moment to celebrate the advances that have been made -- like those in the U.S. capital -- it's also one that reverberates with the challenges that remain.

(To read about how other Change.org writers are marking International Women's Day, check out Alex DiBranco over at Women's Rights and Giovanni Mejia on Human Rights.)

Photo Credit: khym54