From Poverty to Power Green, Oxfam 2008 - weman

4 RISK AND VULNERABILITY HEALTH RISKS4.1 million were newly infected with HIV that year, while 2.8 millionpeople died from AIDS. 53 Dying parents have left more than 15 millionorphans struggling to survive. 54 Despite the growing numbers ofHIV-positive people in India and elsewhere, sub-Saharan Africaremains the global epicentre of the pandemic. Of the 2.3 millionchildren living with HIV and AIDS globally, two million are African.Advances in drug treatments have meant that AIDS is no longer adeath sentence in rich countries, but the high price of medicines andthe lack of effective health services have turned it into a killer of poorpeople, especially women. By December 2006 the World HealthOrganization (WHO) estimated that two million people living withHIV or AIDS were receiving treatment in low- and middle-incomecountries, representing just 28 per cent of the estimated 7.1 millionpeople in need. 55Women are more at risk, both due to the physiology of diseasetransmission and because they are less able to refuse sex or insist oncondoms, since discrimination and consequent economic vulnerabilitydrive them into a high level of dependence on men. Their demands fortreatment or for technologies that prevent transmission, such asmicrobicides, are less likely to be heard by the authorities. Part 2 of thisbook notes that women’s lack of property rights allows widows(whether due to AIDS or other causes) to be driven from their land,leaving them destitute and vulnerable. Three in every four HIVpositiveAfricans are women. 56 Women aged 15–24 are six times morelikely to carry the virus than men in the same age group. 57Such bare statistics utterly fail to convey the depth of the catastrophethat is unfolding in Africa. Stephen Lewis, the UN’s former specialenvoy for HIV and AIDS in Africa, conjures up an apocalyptic vision:The pandemic of HIV/AIDS feels as though it will go on forever.The adult medical wards of the urban hospitals are filled withAIDS-related illnesses, men, women, wasted and dying; aluminiumcoffins wheeling in and out in Kafkaesque rotation; in the pediatricwards, nurses tenderly removing the bodies of infants; funeralsoccupying the weekends, cemeteries running out of grave sites; inthe villages, hut after hut yields a picture of a mother, usually ayoung woman, in the final throes of life. No one is untouched.233