Breaking negative attitudes to women is key to tackling HIV – here's how to do it
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Tanya Abramsky, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
“Women are supposed to be under men’s superiority in everything … you cannot respond when he says anything. You only have to do what he says”. That’s what one young woman told staff at Raising Voices, a Ugandan violence prevention charity, that she used to think before she became a community activist. Sadly, throughout many parts of the world, such views are still common.
These beliefs are also fuelling an epidemic of HIV in women – limiting women’s access to education and economic opportunities, condoning men’s use of violence against them, and ultimately making it difficult for women to refuse sex or request condom use.
HIV is now the leading cause of death and sickness among women of reproductive age in low and middle-income countries. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the region most affected by HIV, adolescent and young women bear the heaviest burden – they are twice as likely to become infected as their male peers.
Current appr...
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