Four starting points from which to outpace this horrible pandemic

The Financial Times, August 15, 2005

Letter to the Editor

Sir, With reference to your editorial "Aids is still winning the global race" (August 10): you and many others consider the goal of preventing HIV infection abstract—but in fact there is nothing abstract about Aids prevention. Governments and multilateral organisations can easily, and must urgently, take the following four concrete actions to prevent the spread of HIV:

• Commit $1bn in the next five years to ensure development and wide distribution of effective microbicides that put the capability for HIV prevention in women's hands.

• Declare zero tolerance for sexual coercion, violence against women, child marriage and other practices that are producing rising rates of infection in girls and women in every region of the world.

• Geometrically expand access to male and female condoms by supporting UN Fund for Population Activities' Comprehensive Condom Campaign.

• Agree, at next month's UN 2005 World Summit, to make women's health services and comprehensive sex education two central priorities in national Aids budgets.

If we start there, we can and will outpace this horrible pandemic.

ADRIENNE GERMAIN
President, International Women's Health Coalition,
New York, NY

Originally published in The Financial Times, August 15, 2005. Reprinted with permission.

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