The Tampon Taboo

Sign in Indonesia, Source: Flikr Creative Commons

For girls everywhere menstruation is a rite of passage. Menstruation is a healthy, normal bodily function that affects half of our population -- the overwhelming majority of our women, at some point in time. But for too many girls worldwide this shared experience is a source of shame, restriction and if badly managed -- illness. Menstruation is an age-old phenomenon and across the developed world we’ve built awareness, products and systems to manage menstrual hygiene to enable women to live their lives seamlessly. Even with such support we can still argue that menstruation is something we’d rather not talk about in the developed world  -- but in the developing world, the stigma around menstruation has led to an invisibility around it that can really hold our girls and women back.

According to the Geneva-based Water Supply & Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC), even sectors such as water and sanitation which “routinely deal with unmentionables such as excreta, ignore girl’s and women’s need for safe spaces to manage menstrual hygiene and mechanisms for safe disposal of materials used to absorb menstrual blood.” As we all know, ignoring a problem -- or menstruation -- does not make it go away. NGO Plan International and A C Nielsen conducted a study and estimated that there are 355 million menstruating women in India -- but only 12% of them use sanitary napkins. The study even found that 23% of Indian girls drop out of school after reaching puberty, with irreversible effects on their health, well-being and participation in society. Millions of girls and women instead rely on old rags, dried leaves and grass, ash, sand or newspaper to manage their monthly menstrual flows -- shrouded by shame and disgust on a vital bodily function.

Columbia University,  Millennium Promise and the social enterprise, Be Girl also hosted pilots for menstrual hygiene products and one of their participants, Patience, a 15-year-old girl from Ruhiira, Uganda told them “you suffer a lot; in case you stamp [stain] the boys can make fun of you which causes you to lose your self-esteem […] it’s embarrassing when you are washing your soiled clothes. It makes you not even want to go to school.” The washing of stained rags or clothing can also bring shame, especially in areas of water scarcity. Be Girl reports that in rural Africa, 40% of school girls miss up to 5 school days a month, or 30% of the school year. WaterAid found that 82% of their surveyed girls in Malawi did now know about menstruation before it started; girls across their surveyed countries were found to be excluded from water sources during menstruation, and even prohibited from washing and bathing in some communities making what is often a difficult week even more difficult to bear.

Source: WaterAid

Given the success of feminine hygiene and menstruation products, and the important role it has played in women's empowerment history, it would appear that the private sector could have significant market opportunity if they can break this taboo for women and girls -- who are expected to require the products for more tham 50 years. Sanitary products must be designed to be affordable; disposable tampons and sanitary towels are often priced out of reach of low- and even middle-income families if supply is scarce. Euromonitor International found that women in India, with average earnings of US $750 per annum earns below the $1,000 per annum deemed necessary to easily purchase disposable menstruation products. Moreover, systems to support menstrual hygiene are necessary, products alone aren’t the solution: appropriately designed and managed community spaces and importantly education on female reproductive health.

To make this happen, WSSCC believes that breaking the silence around the taboo of menstruation is a crucial first step. Girls should be informed and encouraged to talk and discuss menstruation in an informed and positive manner to prepare them emotionally and physically for the onset of menstruation and their monthly menstrual periods. Families need the education to support their girls and women. WaterAid has also compiled a phenomenal guide, Menstrual Hygiene Matters, with nine modules and tool kits -- an essential resource -- to improve menstrual hygienic for women and girls in lower and middle-income countries.

WaterAid found that well designed and appropriate water, sanitation and hygiene facilities that address menstrual hygiene can make a significant difference to the schooling experience of adolescent girls
(Photo: WaterAid/ASM Shafiqur Rahman) 

As WSSCC spokesperson, Archana Patkar,  powerfully argues: “Women are the progenitors of the human race […] Menstruation is therefore something of which they can and should be proud, so each and every one of us should work to improve the lives and life chances for women who do not have access to clean materials, water and safe disposal facilities; who cannot talk about their experiences; or are never asked if they can help define a solution.”

Sex Trafficking: A Reality for Hungary, Europe, and the World

Before I left for Paris in 2009 to study at the Sorbonne and run the 33rd Paris marathon to celebrate my own physical health and ascension from a challenging childhood to a healthy young woman, I returned to my home state of Pennsylvania and ran my old childhood route. I ran for two hours and could feel my almost 30-year-old body morph back into that determined eight year-old-girl who was already witnessing too much violence, swearing I would travel the world and help ignite positive change. The same hills of my childhood seemed so small that day, and as I ran onward I found myself in an open cornfield swathed in golden sunlight. I just stood there. So strong. So free.

While in London yesterday running along the River Thames, I stopped to breathe the biggest sigh of relief, because I felt like for the first time in some months I had my own safety back. Viable threats to my body and to harm have been decreased by rigorous follow ups, reminders, and DNA tests; even after I was told an escalation of harm to me would be more helpful to the law. I leaned over the bridge and just thought, “I’m an athlete, a writer, and if it’s this hard for me, what about women who actually work in the sex industry, much less those who are trafficked?”

For the past year, I have been following the work of Andrea Matolcsi who joined MONA Foundation for the Women of Hungary, a gender equality NGO, in late 2008. MONA is one of the founding members of the Hungarian Women’s Lobby, which is a member of the European Women’s Lobby. Andrea is the project coordinator of the Development of Interdisciplinary Cooperation in Hungary to Support the Fight against Trafficking and Prostitution.

Recently, Andrea explained that some of the major shortcomings in Hungary in the field of trafficking for sexual exploitation and prostitution are legislation, victim assistance, and interdisciplinary cooperation. According to Andrea, the MONA project “developed proposals for a thorough and appropriate revision of the relevant legal–institutional framework, for the development of an institutional system that is able to care for victims, and for the initiation of prevention programs, both on a societal and an individual level, including research, public awareness-raising, education, and training programs.”

She shares MONA’s goal is to create, “as soon as possible a law as a result of which it will be less worthwhile and risk-free to pimp prostitutes, to keep a brothel, to recruit, sell or buy women and children; a law which ensures respect for victims and provides them with assistance, and also guarantees protection for those who assist them.”

In fact, in her interview with me Andrea twice cited that MONA, “considers it necessary that a legal framework is developed that does not confuse the rights of women with a right to women: one that protects the right of all women to a life free from prostitution.”

Officially completed in March 2010, MONA’s project still continues activities, and it does so during a highly relevant time, because sex trafficking numbers are growing fast. According to Rich Daly’s article Sex Traffic Rises, Along With Scramble for Solutions released on June 16 via Women’s e-News, “the State Department's annual release of trafficking figures estimated 12.3 million adults and children were trafficked in 2009, at a rate of 1.8 people per 1,000 worldwide. The Trafficking in Persons Report 2010 graded 175 nations on their efforts to combat all forms of human trafficking and found local officials were able to identify 49,105 victims of all types of trafficking, which is 59 percent more than in 2008.”

A recent Ms. Blog post, 10 Things Men and Boys Can Do to Stop Human Trafficking states: “Human trafficking is modern day slavery. It is the use of force, fraud, or coercion to compel another person to provide labor or commercial sex against their will, and it is one of the fastest growing criminal enterprises in the world.”

Ms. Blog also cites the Polaris Project, which gives even higher statistics than the State Department. According to them, “27 million people are enslaved globally. 14,000–17,500 individuals are brought into the U.S. as human trafficking victims each year. One million children enter the global commercial sex trade every year.”

As I ran back to my London hotel, I realized again how deep my desire for safety and health in this world so I can write about and run for those who do not have the means to create it for themselves as of yet. Dana Popa’s Not Natasha, pictured here and originally published by the International Museum of Women’s Imagining Ourselves, features women who were sex trafficked in Moldova, the poorest nation in Europe. Natasha is a nickname given to prostitutes.

In February 2010, the European Women’s Lobby released From Beijing to Brussels an Unfinished Journey, which summarizes what the organization sees as a need for greater progress during an exceptionally challenged time. “Both new and persistent challenges for actors working to achieve effective equality between women and men exist at local, national, European and the global level. The most immediate and visible of these challenges is the financial and economic crisis, which has become a social crisis. The European Women’s Lobby’s strong and consistent message is that the crisis is gendered in both its nature and its effects and that, given this, it is all the more necessary to pursue and strengthen policies for the protection of women’s independence, integrity, and equality.”

Photo credit: Dana Popa

MAKE CHANGE: International Violence Against Women Act

Amnesty International cites that "one out of every three women worldwide has been physically or sexually abused during her lifetime with rates of domestic violence reaching 70 percent in some countries." Currently, the International Violence Against Women (IVAWA) act is making its way through Congress.

Take action. Create difference. Provoke change. Pass the International Violence Against Women Act.

Global AIDS Alliance's Policy Director Lisa Schectman explains the importance of the bill, "IVAWA will provide strategic, technical and financial support to a set of focus countries with high prevalence of violence against women and girls, and will look for ways to build off existing programs that are failing due to experiences of violence had by those the programs are trying to serve. This bill provides for the most efficient and effective use of US taxpayer dollars for addressing violence; both the House and Senate are set to consider the bill in Committee in early September, and Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi must pave the way for IVAWA to reach the President’s desk this fall."

You can learn more about the bill at Women Thrive Worldwide, the Global AIDS Alliance action alert page, or UNIFEM's support I-VAWA page.

Photo credit: Women Thrive Worldwide

Health Versus Harm: Youth Advocacy and the Fight Against Violence Against Women and Girls and HIV/AIDS

Read Part 1, Health Versus Harm: Zero Tolerance on Violence Against Women and Girls.

PART 2
Winnie Ncongwane is a 34 year-old single mother of two currently residing in Mbabane, Swaziland. Winnie and I met at the 2010 AIDS Conference and her strength resonated as soon as I sat down next to her.

Recently, Winnie shared with me her thoughts on how she has come into her current role as an empowered HIV-positive woman journalist and activist, “Losing family and friends from HIV/AIDS made me choose to live positively than to die in an abusive have-it-all marriage. I left all the luxury and walked out of my marital home with a bag of clothes for me and my children. I had to start life from scratch, sleeping on a mat on the floor with my children, but at least I had a job. Today, I am happy and I never regret leaving that house for a second. Now, think of a young woman, who has no job or education and depends fully on the man, who might be in the same situation as mine. What can she do, than to stay in such a situation and wait for her last hour? If there are no policies to protect abused women, they will stay as they see no other option out.”

Accordingly, in Swaziland women are more infected by HIV/AIDS. There, females aged between 15 and 19 are infected five times more than their male counterparts, and the ages of 20 to 24 are infected three times more than the males in the same age group.

In July 2010, Winnie started working for the International Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS after being a member since 2007. She finds her work fulfilling because she is doing what she has always wanted to do, which is communicating and showing her peers that there is life after HIV. Her dream “is to make the HIV/AIDS story worth understanding and most of all remove the stigma that HIV comes with.”

Neelanjana Mukhia is the International Women’s Rights Policy and Campaign Coordinator at ActionAid’s international secretariat and one of the founders who currently manages the international campaign secretariat of Women Won’t Wait: End HIV and Violence Against Women and Girls Now. She shared with me their report What’s the Budget? Where’s the Staff? Moving from Policy to Practice. It cites, “Violence against women and girls and HIV are global, intersecting health and human rights crises. Research demonstrates how women’s risk of, and exposure to, threats or actual violence, particularly intimate partner violence, is a leading factor in women’s heightened vulnerability to HIV. Meanwhile, women are subjected to different forms of violence on a daily basis due to their real or perceived HIV status, whether in their homes, in the workplace, in schools, in health facilities or elsewhere. Both epidemics limit women’s power and participation in society and their agency over their own lives and bodies, sustaining women’s economic, political, social and sexual subordination as well as denial of women’s human rights.”

Where is the good news? UNAIDS recent release of their report, How Young People Are Leading the HIV Revolution, highlights that “HIV prevalence trends in 16 countries show decline among young people 15-24 years.”

Youth advocates are paving the way in HIV/AIDS prevention. As part of Vienna Youth Force 2010 and as an Intern at the Joint United Nations Program on HIV and AIDS, Remmy Shawa joined the fight against VAW/G and HIV/AIDS after his Aunt became HIV-positive from her husband and gave birth to her HIV-positive son, his cousin. Born in Zambia, yet raised in a rural area called Chongwe, Remmy lived with his parents before moving to the main city of Lusaka for education. After trying to stay with relatives in Lusaka at 15 years of age, he started staying alone, renting a small room with support from his parents until he finished his high school education.

Remmy’s views on VAW/G as a major factor in HIV/AIDS are just as powerful as his reason for becoming an advocate. “The fight to end the social vulnerability of women to HIV, like harmful gender and cultural practices needs to start with bringing men on board as well. We need to design strategies that work with men and boys not only as perpetrators of gender violence, but as partners with an upper hand in the politics and the economy of our nation. The concepts of masculinity need to be redefined and fatherhood must also be used as one way men can show their love and responsibility to their family in the absence of violence.”

Yvonne Akoth and Kuena Diaho were also part of Vienna Youth Force 2010. From the Mountain Kingdom of Lesotho, Kuena currently holds a bachelor’s in law degree from the University of Lesotho. Since 2004, she has worked with the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) as a youth advocate. She shared how at her first meeting she kept looking at the door waiting for more young women to arrive, but as she kept attending she realized she was experiencing, “more than just meetings but also a safe space for the women to come together and share their experiences. The YWCA has since been my home and more.”

For Yvonne, who was born and raised in the Kwale District which is in the Coast Province of Kenya, her work as a young leader guide for the Kenya Girl Guides Association (KGGA) feels like a privilege. In our recent interview, she shared Kenya’s progress, “Statistically HIV/AIDS is decreasing in Kenya as a result of behavior change among the youth in the age cohort (15 – 24yrs) most likely to be infected. Rates have dropped down due to increase of condom use especially in urban centres, reduction of multiple partners, peer education programs in schools and colleges, TV and Radio advertisements targeting young people, youth friendly one stop centres in most districts, billboards, etc.”

However, Yvonne also shares that even though every African country has a national body to address HIV/AIDS. She still believes that if more young people “are co-opted as members of the various committees in the governing body, many issues affecting young people, especially girls and young women, will be [more] adequately addressed.”

The Global AIDS Alliance (GAA) agrees. GAA’s Policy Director Lisa Schechtman sums up their work ahead. “Through the press conference and the participation of Yvonne Chaka Chaka, we have begun exploring a partnership with the Man Up Campaign, which focuses on empowering youth leaders to end violence against women and girls. In addition, GAA has long been working with other partners that have also identified a multisectoral approach similar to the seven pillars, such as the Women Won’t Wait Campaign, and more recently, the CDC, which is developing a technical package of interventions for the Sexual Violence against Girls Initiative that nearly mirrors the seven pillar approach. That a comprehensive multisectoral response is the only way to halt and mitigate the impacts of violence against women and girls has been accepted; our goal with the new report [Political Breakthrough: Mobilizing Accelerated Action to End Violence Against Women and Girls by 2015] is to emphasize that rhetoric and technical documents alone will never protect women or change the power dynamics or social and gender norms that perpetuate violence. Only real political will and long-term predictable funding directed to local civil society and community-based organizations—those that know their own needs best—will get us there. And without this, our multibillion dollar fight against AIDS is certain to fail.”

No one wants to see this much potential melt away as we move beyond AIDS 2010. Yet even with the power of youth advocacy, new treatments, and the syncing up of organizations with comprehensive approaches, only time, stable funding, and continued action will show true change. As individuals, you can keep momentum going by taking your own steps in the fight against VAW/G and HIV/AIDS by supporting the International Violence Against Women Act (IVAWA) through the Global AIDS Alliance action page. You can also check out Michelle Hamilton's A Magnificent Mile at Runner's World which highlight's Founder of Run for Congo Women Lisa Shannon's work along with Women for Women International. A team to race the 20 Kilometers de Paris on 10.10.10 at 10 AM for Congo Women is currently being assembled to run to benefit the organizations. You can learn more at the Run for Congo Women Team Paris site.

On August 12, 2010 in order to celebrate International Youth Day the UN launched the International Year of Youth. The the theme for 2010 to 2011 is "Our Year our Voice."

Photo credit: AIDS 2010

Health Versus Harm: Zero Tolerance on Violence Against Women and Girls

PART 1
This past weekend after my first lap running along the Seine then past the Louvre through the Tuileries, Place de la Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe, and back, I paused to stretch in front of the Louvre and thought, “I am the luckiest human being alive to run this. Go again? Yes. Go again? Then again!” When I was fully exhausted but sprinting to finish strong on the Champs-Élysées, I was applauded by tourists. I smiled and thought about how much I love endurance running and how much deeper the reasons why. I know what I look like out there sporting my Run for Congo Women t-shirt and Comrades 2010 hat: Determined. Physically healthy. Strong. That has always been the goal.

But, then, as I was walking down the Metro stairs sipping Pellegrino, I saw her. Head down. No shoes. Bare toes out. Unwashed. I will never see her face. She couldn’t even bear to lift her head to beg anymore. Why bother? She just sat there hunched over, huddled in defeat at the bottom of the stairs with a dirty empty cup. So, I gave. She is why I am so determined. She is why I run. She is why for three years I traveled alone while raising monies for girls and women’s health through Girls on the Run International and their charity, SoleMates. To see her. To speak with her. To mentor her. Then, to ensure change for her.

For these past weeks, I have had my own head down reading reports citing statistics about gender-based violence (GBV). I kept asking questions and hoping for answers that would somehow give sound reason as to why so many women and girls in this world are being harmed. With that harm what happens to their chance for physical health? How high are their risks of other vulnerabilities like HIV/AIDS?

Globally, one in three women will be beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime according to a 2010 fact sheet put out by Women Won’t Wait Campaign, International AIDS Women’s Caucus, and the International Women’s Health Coalition. According to Women for Women International’s article Violence Against Women and Girls, “A 2007 report and survey of grassroots Iraqi women found that 63.9% of respondents stated that violence against women in general was increasing, with 38.5% reporting that rape was increasing.”



Women for Women International’s research also depicts harrowing challenges in Africa, “Over the course of more than a decade of war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), millions of lives have been lost and hundreds of thousands of women and girls have been raped in a strategic campaign of sexual violence employed by virtually all armed groups, including the military... In 2009, the violence is still increasing.”

As such in 2009, violence against girls was cited by the Clinton Global Initiative as an epidemic. From their web site, “According to the World Health Organization (WHO), in one year alone nearly 150 million girls experience some form of sexual violence. Rape, assault, exploitation, and trafficking devastate the lives of victims and contribute to the spread of HIV and AIDS.”

In fact, last year, the Clinton Global Initiative brought together nine organizations—the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the CDC Foundation, five United Nations organizations (UNICEF, UNAIDS, UNFPA, UNIFEM, and the WHO), the Nduna Foundation, and Grupo ABC—and each pledged their commitment to end violence, in particular sexual violence, against girls.

At AIDS 2010, the Guardian reported Bill Clinton and Bill Gates opened with a speech about why organizations should make the best use of donated monies due to the economic crisis hampering an increase in funding. Yet conference statistics cited epidemic numbers of violence against women and girls (VAW/G) and also how deep the links between gender-based violence (GBV) and HIV/AIDS. In fact, the American Bar Association’s article Universal Access and Human Rights: For Women and Girls, Too affirms the current challenge in the fight against HIV/AIDS is to acknowledge “the feminization of a modern day pandemic.”

While in Vienna, the Global AIDS Alliance (GAA), an advocacy organization that focuses on improving U.S., multilateral, and affected-country national government policy and funding for the global AIDS pandemic, held the press conference pictured here to announce their report, Political Breakthrough: Mobilizing Accelerated Action to End Violence Against Women and Girls by 2015.

After the press conference, I spoke with Lisa Schechtman who is the Policy Director of the Global AIDS Alliance. In a recent interview, she shared, “the new report was called ‘Political Breakthrough’ because, for the first time, three major AIDS donors and normative agencies (PEPFAR, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and UNAIDS), have placed GBV front and center in their efforts and have committed to providing funding dedicated to addressing this critical challenge—the first expression of political will.”

Lisa affirms needing more than political momentum, however, even as she acknowledges the inherent importance. “While political will starts as rhetoric, it allows for affected communities to demand action and for advocates and activists to hold donors and policymakers accountable for actually doing something—the second and most important expression of political will. It also allows us to trace where the money is going and what impact it is having.”

Enter funding. The problem is the reality. The places where HIV/AIDS are most prevalent are some of the most impoverished in our world. According to UNIFEM’s Backgrounder at AIDS 2010 “in Africa where the epidemic is most widespread, young women are three times more likely to be HIV-positive than young men.” The organization cites gender inequality as one of the most important reasons for this. Less control over their bodies and their lives leads to higher rates of HIV for women and young girls. Is that not another way to say, gender-based or sexual violence?

Even with all of the preceding, eliminating gender-based violence is not explicitly one of the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals hence some of the current funding challenges. Lisa explains, “very little funding from any source has been directed specifically to GBV. Slightly more funding has been directed to the intersection of GBV and HIV, but even this has been small and directed to piecemeal projects that do not advance comprehensive change or even meet the needs of the vast number of women and girls who experience violence. Through these smaller efforts supported by the international community and many other programs undertaken by local civil society around the world, we have learned not only that we can address violence, but how to do so effectively. It’s time to stop talking about this major human rights abuse and hold our governments accountable for doing what works at a scale that can reach everyone in need.”

The International Violence Against Women Act (IVAWA) is a major step in ascertaining that goal. IVAWA is currently moving through Congress with bipartisan support and as Lisa shares, “it mandates a coordinated, multiagency multisectoral response to GBV across all USG diplomatic and international development channels. Recognizing that violence against women and girls has an impact on—and is impacted by—every area of a woman’s life and every part of society, the bill takes a holistic approach and, for the first time, makes violence against women and girls a foreign policy priority for the United States.”

Therefore, IVAWA, the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), and how effective both female and male youth are as agents of mobilization and social change to end VAW/G for greater public health was also the focus of researchers and advocacy groups at AIDS 2010 and beyond.

Check out Her Blueprint on Thursday, August 12 for Part 2 of this article in which Kate goes in-depth with Remmy Shawa, Intern of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV and AIDS, Yvonne Akoth of the Kenya Girl Guides Association, and other youth and women advocates who are taking huge strides in the prevention of gender-based violence and the rights of those living with HIV/AIDS.

AIDS 2010: Rights Here, Rights Now

From check-in to landing, the flight home to Paris late last evening from Vienna, where I was attending the XVIII International AIDS Conference, was anything but smooth. Admittedly, once airborne and while flying through lightening, the Air France flight attendant had to slightly console me, even though the African woman adjacent to me had a chenille turquoise blanket wrapped around her eyes and head, and was clutching it outright every time we rocked or dipped. She had put away the book she was reading with the chapter entitled, “Living with HIV/AIDS.”

We landed safely. At baggage claim, while standing next to Professor Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, pictured here because she was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2008 for her shared discovery of HIV in 1983, I realized had the plane experienced fatal issues, the whole world would have recognized a monumental loss. Professor Barré-Sinoussi’s life is that significant to everyone.



With the “Rights Here, Rights Now” theme, the significance of human life and rights were forefront at AIDS 2010. I heard many participants, especially youth advocates and Michel Kazatchkine, Executive Director of The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, invoking The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

In 1948, The General Assembly of the United Nations adopted UDHR and signed it here in Paris in response to the Holocaust, which The United States Holocaust Museum web site says allowed for the murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi. Therefore, UDHR asserts that the “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.”

According to a report published by UNAIDS in November 2009, HIV/AIDS is the world’s fourth leading cause of death. Since 1981, the disease has killed 25 million people. In 2008, it claimed 2 million lives, yet that year an additional 2.7 million people became infected. At the same time, there were 33.4 million individuals living with HIV.

With over 770 volunteers, 228 sessions, 6,000 abstracts, and 193 countries, AIDS 2010 breathed human rights. Vienna’s Messe Wien conference center became a microcosm of a world where top researchers and doctors, people living with AIDS/HIV, Nobel Prize Laureates, activists, advocates, and artists, journalists, NGOs, GOs, and politicians (though less than desired) all converged to assess how the world will meet the AIDS/HIV United Nations Millennium Development Goals to:

1. Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS.

2. Achieve, by 2010, universal access to treatment for HIV/AIDS for all those who need it.

3. Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.

On Monday, July 19, AIDS 2010 opened with a speech by Bill Clinton and Bill Gates. By Wednesday, UNAIDS announced that top world personalities like Desmond Tutu, Irene Khan, Jacque Chirac, and Professor Françoise Barré-Sinoussi are joining with UNAIDS to bring about a prevention revolution. In that press conference’s release, Professor Barré-Sinoussi cites, “Today, for every 2 persons starting treatment, 5 new infections occur.”

That is, 7000 new infections daily.

Check back starting in August for more Her Blueprint posts in which Kate talks about other AIDS 2010-related issues, from the link between Gender-Based Violence and HIV/AIDS to Haiti’s tuberculosis crisis post-quake.