En-gendering AIDS Prevention Gateway to Sustainable Development

Submitted by anirudhaalam on July 29, 2008 - 7:02am.

Anirudha Alam

Nowadays gender discrimination is the key challenge for sustainable development. It widens the likelihood of HIV/AIDS epidemic. So we have to alleviate all the discriminations as regards achieving ownership, leadership and dignity, enjoying freedom, controlling resources, accessing to information, establishing rights, making decision, grooming voices, taking responsibility as well as participating in development activities.

Women are being increasingly affected by HIV. So the reduction of gender-based discrimination has to be integral to the strategic response to HIV/AIDS. Otherwise there is a great scope that HIV/AIDS epidemic may be feminized. The aftermath of feminized endemic is very much enough for ruining overall development achievement. As per the UNAIDS report 2004, nowhere is the epidemic’s ‘feminization’ more perceptible than in sub-Saharan Africa, where fifty seven per cent of adults infected are women as well as seventy five per cent of young people infected are women and girls.

An essential fact is that lack of good governance is the ideal vehicle of deprivation and poverty. Concurrently spread of HIV/AIDS is closely associated with poverty and discrimination. All of these social issues intertwined with different byproducts like stigmatization, violence and sexual abuse affect the endeavors dedicated to establishing just society. People centered planning with a view to ensuring exclusive participation, accountability, commitment and transparency may promote good governance undoubtedly. Capitalizing on this pro-poor planning, HIV/AIDS prevention should be led by gender sensitized policy and strategy. Eventually, as a far-seeing impact it is possible to achieve sustainable development.

A socio-economic study in 2006 conducted by Rainbow Nari O Shishu Kallyan Foundation shows that lack of reproductive health literacy attributed by social stigma and poverty among adolescents at rural level in Bangladesh makes 98% young women practice risky behaviors. They are growing as unskilled manpower having minimal livelihood development. They are turning into vulnerable especially to STDs (sexually transmitted diseases)/HIV/AIDS on a great scale. Their vulnerabilities due to their too little life-skill are affecting the mainstream process of sustainable development extensively.

Being affected by the negative social and economic consequences of HIV/AIDS, women are compelled to experience various kinds of deceptions and deprivations cruelly. Therefore, a gender-inclusive approach to HIV/AIDS has to play a role to ensure women’s rights to productive resources comprising land, credit, agricultural technologies, and other facilities. In this regard, initiating outreach on HIV/AIDS to rural communities may help mitigate the negative impact of HIV/AIDS on sustainable development as a whole.

Without having gateway to health knowledge and protection comprehensively, women are very much susceptible to HIV infection. They, especially the young women, bear the vulnerability of the reproductive tract tissues to the virus. The stigma of STIs in women makes them hesitate to get proper treatment. They are supposed to bear the maximum burden of caring for sick family members. But often they have less care and support when they themselves are infected severely.

As the stepping stone to sustainable development, in the 1980s a new approach was evolved. This is the mainstreaming strategy which aims to make the goal of gender equality central to all development activities. If AIDS prevention is not en-gendered sustainable development might be endangered. So to en-gender all the development initiatives, especially HIV/AIDS prevention, it is necessary to involve a strategy for making women’s as well as men’s concerns and experiences an integral part of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programs in all political, economic and social spheres. It results in that men and women will be benefited equally and inequality will be removed as a whole.

Anirudha Alam
Deputy Director
(Information & Development Communication)
BEES (Bangladesh Extension Education Services)
183, Lane 2, Eastern Road, New DOHS
Mohakhali, Dhaka 1206
Bangladesh.

Phone: 8801718342876, 88029889732, 88029889733 (office)
88028050514 (res.)

E-mail: anirudhaalam@yahoo.com
info@bees-bd.org, bees@worldnetbd.net
Website: http://anirudha-alam.blogspot.com/

Ref: UNAIDS, World Bank, UNFPA, UNESCO

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but how to do achieve it?

Submitted by asharma on August 27, 2008 - 5:43pm.

I apologize if this comes as a bit of a non sequitor, but it was initially prompted by a comment I was making in another forum about limits on effective intervention strategies. I can't dispute the assertion that 'gender empowerment' is need to provide vulnerable, at-risk women with the tools for their own protection, but the phrase risks becoming a vague cliche unless we are prepared to apply some thought to the question of how best to realize it. We too often pay lip service to the need for 'multi-disciplinary collaboration', which in my experience is harder to realize than we imagine, since it requires actively engaging the interest and attention of colleagues with already busy agendas. In a university setting, I wonder if I need to be more deliberate in seeking out resources that can help us answer questions of public health importance. For example (and this is the part I have trouble suggesting, since I tend to equate marketing with thought control:), asking our colleagues in marketing departments to help us develop tools like focus groups to assess the impact of various interventions in a cost-effective and do-able way. Or asking our colleagues in economics departments to help us develop better statistical (latent variable, utility theory) models for examining underlying motives and behaviors. Or seeking out expertise from anyone whose toolbox might contain instruments useful to us. This is particularly true when it comes to the tricky question of modifying behaviors and lifestyles, where we have often been less successful than we might have hoped. While I am bit hesitant to propose what may be dismissed as a silly idea, I guess I was just wondering if it's time for us to embrace the tools of marketing consultants as 'thinking outside the box'? Surely the stakes involved oblige us to consider any potentially useful approaches.

Atul Sharma MD, FRCP(C)
Dept of Pediatrics,
McGill University