So one day doesn't seem sufficient to address this massive killer of men, women and children. One day cannot give proper credence to the magnitude of this war that we are waging. One day out of 365 is barely enough time to acknowledge all those who live with this disease the other 364 days of the year.
For those who live with HIV, it is a daily struggle - twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It is our responsibility to fully acknowledge that daily struggle whenever we speak about ending this disease.
And it is our responsibility to push the richest country in the world - America - to do more. We must demand that the American government increase its financial commitment to fight global AIDS. We must demand that the American government abandon its ideological abstinence-until-marriage HIV prevention strategies and instead adopt science-based, proven prevention programs. The most vulnerable citizens - young people, women and girls, and cultural minorities - are not being properly educated about HIV. Without adequate education, any HIV/AIDS prevention policy is doomed to fail.
Although a report "2007 AIDS Epidemic Update" recently released by UNAIDS shows that HIV rates are on the decline, more adult women than ever before are now living with HIV and about 40 percent of all new infections in 2007 occurred among youth ages 15-24. The report also highlights the "knowledge of safe sex and HIV" remains low in many countries and among many high risk populations. Additionally, many do not believe that they are at risk of being infected.
Twenty-five years into this epidemic and young people, who weren't even born when the epidemic began, are now its biggest victims.
These are outrageous statistics!
These are statistics that should never, ever have happened!
These are statistics that must be changed!
How did this happen? How did we get to the point where our youngest and brightest live with a devastating, often debilitating disease on a daily basis? And how can we, in good conscience, think that devoting one day out of 365 is enough?
We've waited twenty-six years for adults to stop this disease - and you haven't. You haven't even come close. What you have done is far too little, way too late, and to continue to ask us to wait is both cruel and meaningless. There are now almost 12 million young people who are HIV positive - that's 12 million infections which could have been prevented.
From now on, we need to understand that if one of us is infected with this disease, we are all affected by it. That is the only way we will stop AIDS. We must all start living the other 364 days like AIDS is in our life every minute, every day, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
One day is not enough!
]]>In a letter to Jill Sheffield, president of Family Care International, these groups alleged that "the conference agenda was so preoccupied with promoting the ideology and practice of abortion that the genuine health care needs of women and children were virtually ignored." The letter insinuated that members of the organizing committee -- including the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and Marie Stopes International -- utilized the conference as a platform to promote a private agenda and abortion throughout the third world, since they have a vested financial interest in the provision of abortion. To state that the conference "sidelined the main issues related to maternal mortality" (basic health conditions based on vaccine availability, clean water, sanitation, basic nutritional supplementation, primary medical post-natal and peri-natal care, fistula, female genital mutilation, hemorrhage, sepsis, obstructed labor, and eclampsia) is grossly unfair. Though some issues were stressed more than others, between speakers' corner sessions, featured sessions, and the simultaneous sessions, I feel that all those "sidelined" topics were addressed. What many pro-life organizations fail to realize is that it is impossible to speak about family planning and infant and maternal mortality and morbidity without discussing abortion. Yes, there were five workshops discussing abortion during the conference. However, I find it odd that these same organizations are not complaining that there twice as many sessions focusing on HIV/AIDS and women. Why are they not proclaiming that Women Deliver has become an AIDS conference? I think it is easy for anti-abortion groups to start pointing fingers and stating that everyone is shaping things to be about abortion, when this is not the case. The fact is that abortion cannot be excluded from a conference such as Women Deliver and for an organization, whether pro-life or pro-choice, to have wanted such sidelining is, as stated by one attendee, "a serious act of negligence which leads not only to continuing, but increasing the risks associated with maternal health."
In my opinion, the conference was well rounded, containing sessions which discussed issues such as income disparity and its effects on maternal health care; obstetric fistula; female genital mutilation; increasing funding to low-income countries to fund sexual reproductive rights programs; eclampsia; post-natal care; violence in pregnancy; obstetric complications; cervical cancer; investing in health care systems; malaria in pregnancy; HIV/AIDS and motherhood; international human rights laws and their effect on women; and many more topics. Although I wish that more of the sessions would have focused on youth, I do believe that the conference was objective and most certainly did not exploit the tragedy of infant and maternal mortality and morbidity to promote abortion rights.
]]>To read the letter in its entirety, please check out the comment on Rupert Walder's post on Women Deliver entitled "Global Commitment to Safe Motherhood."
Additionally, for a conference that is focused on women's maternal health and sexual reproductive rights, there is a lack of focus and recognition of the importance of the rights of young girls. Why is there only a focus on adult women when pregnancy is the leading cause of death for young women ages 15 through 19 in developing countries? And when girls under age 15 are five times more likely to die during pregnancy or child birth than those over age 20? Furthermore, infants of adolescent mothers are more likely to die before their first birthday than are the infants of older mothers. Issues affecting young girls--such as child marriage, female genital mutilation, Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) and fistula--should have been included, but were sadly missing from the broader discussion of maternal health.
While I applaud the conference for including a youth panel on the first day, I was disheartened to see that of the approximate 2,000 conference attendees, only about 20 or so attended the “Coming of Age” panel that consisted of seven youth advocates and peer educators. The youth speakers discussed how youth are denied basic human rights and, therefore, other rights such as sexual and reproductive rights and maternal rights are not provided to young people. I had hoped that more of the delegates, ministers and senior executives of NGOs working on policy issues would have attended the program and listened to the young people’s opinions. Youth participation was high on the agenda of all the panel speakers who voiced the need for more youth to be empowered and given the opportunity to speak for themselves rather than having disproportionate numbers of adults speaking on our behalf. It seems as though everyone states that youth issues are on their agenda. I challenge the conference participants to prove that such statements are more than just rhetoric by taking action to include young people meaningfully and supporting their right to plan a family and their future.
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