Comprehensive Sexuality Education is HIV-Prevention

Comprehensive Sexuality Education is HIV-Prevention; World AIDS Day 2004 -- Women, Girls, and HIV and AIDS

11/30/2004 10:29:00 AM

To: National Desk, Health and Medical reporters

Contact: Adrienne Verrilli of Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, 212-819-9770; http://www.siecus.org

NEW YORK, Nov. 30 /U.S. Newswire/ -- On Dec. 1, World AIDS Day 2004, the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the U.S. (SIECUS) will reaffirm its commitment to raise awareness of the global HIV/AIDS pandemic and to promote the importance of comprehensive, medically accurate sexuality education as the mainstay in HIV-prevention.

"As we recognize World AIDS Day, we are reminded that HIV/AIDS is an unprecedented global crisis that requires bold leadership based on sound science and respect for human rights," said Bill Smith, vice president of public policy at SIECUS. "We need to expand comprehensive sexuality education programs that provide open, honest, and medically accurate information about sexual health. This type of program is particularly crucial for young women both domestically and internationally," Smith continued.

Today, more than 20 years into the pandemic, women account for nearly half of the 40 million people living with HIV worldwide. HIV prevalence rates for girls ages 13 to 19 are now six times that of boys in the same age group, with teenage girls' rates rising rapidly, while boys' are going down. In fact, in sub-Saharan Africa, 57 percent of adults with HIV are women, and young women ages 15 to 24 are more than three times as likely to be infected as young men. In testimony to this situation, women, girls, and HIV and AIDS will be the focus of World AIDS Day programs worldwide.

"Because women have unequal access to resources, they are more vulnerable to coercion, more likely to be economically dependent on men, and less likely to be able to negotiate methods of protection," said Smith. "Comprehensive sexuality education, however, gives young women a foundation of facts and a set of relationship and negotiation skills that help them to establish more equitable relationships and improve their health and well-being. Providing real sexuality education is not the only change we need to make to ensure young women's health and safety, but other interventions will be meaningless without it," Smith continued.

However, considerable roadblocks lie ahead. Tragically, a multi-million dollar funding stream, dressed-up as a HIV-prevention strategy, has been created through the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). One-third of the HIV-prevention dollars provided under PEPFAR are dedicated to abstinence-until-marriage programs. Like the unproven abstinence-only-until-marriage programs supported by the Bush Administration in the U.S., these international programs typically omit information about condoms and reinforce the very gender stereotypes that have left women more vulnerable to HIV-infection. For example, these programs promote marriage as the primary method of preventing the transmission of HIV.

"Marriage alone does not prevent the transmission of HIV. In fact, as the data shows, marriage is actually a risk factor for women in several of the countries suffering most under the HIV/AIDS pandemic," said Smith. "Abstinence-only-until-marriage programs not only fail to take into account the economic, social, and cultural context of other nations, but also have failed to be proven effective even in the U.S. This is just one more example of the Bush Administration exporting its conservative ideology at the expense of sound public health policy," Smith continued.

For more information on women, girls and HIV, go to: http://www.siecus.org/inter/FS_WomenHIV-AIDS.pdf

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