"It is difficult to assimilate HIV as a chronic disease, while pregnancies can be complicated for many other diseases!" Access to care, employment, prejudices, depending on the country and customs, women face an increased risk of discrimination. Yet today, it is possible to live well with HIV. What are the means of action against this?
Vulnerability, access to care, taboos around sexuality and the virus, women exposed to or living with HIV face an increased risk of discrimination and stigma. What are the means of action against this?
HIV is still present in France and around the world and each year people discover their HIV status. However, today it is possible to stop the epidemic and offer an AIDS-free world to new generations. Prevention and screening are the keys to stopping the epidemic.
First French association for the fight against HIV and viral hepatitis in France, AIDES is organizing an e-event on July 4 entitled # fêtelamour to celebrate love in all its forms, talk about sex, prevention and testing, and collect donations to finance the fight against HIV / AIDS.
Women more vulnerable to HIV
In 2009, the World Health Organization (WHO) published a report, "Women and health", which found that the risk of HIV transmission from an HIV-positive man to a woman was two to four times higher than the risk of HIV transmission from an HIV-positive woman to a man. In 2019 in France, almost a third of discoveries of HIV status concern women, and AIDS remains the leading cause of death in the world for women aged 15 to 44. If cisgender women are biologically more vulnerable to HIV, they are also because of gender inequalities, gender-based and sexual violence and the precarious living conditions suffered by many of them, in France and around the world. In fact, the women most affected by the epidemic are those who combine several factors of vulnerability and stigmatization: women of immigrant origin, sex workers or drug users for example.
If exposure to HIV therefore affects women to different degrees depending on their social status, origins or factors of vulnerability, all those who discover their HIV status may be affected by the discrimination and stigma linked to the virus in many aspects of the daily. For example, professionally.
Anne Bouferguène is a French businesswoman. When she was 15 she discovered that she was infected with HIV, at a time when we thought we could not survive, she chose to tell her story when she became an adult and had a successful career in the tourism sector. She had to withhold her status for 15 years to avoid being confronted with negative judgments or to reduce her to her HIV-positive. Even today, she talks about it but most often prefers not to mention it: " My status as an HIV positive person does not define me! There is a stigma when talking about HIV. As an HIV positive person, today there is a heavy subject for others, not for me! But we don't like having a heavy subject for others so we keep quiet. Yet today we live well with HIV. "
What specificities linked to HIV for women?
The virus spread widely among men who have sex with men, who appeared as the first affected group in the early 1980s. Women were less visible, little included in prevention messages at the start.
It is in particular with the spread of the epidemic in Africa, especially in South Africa where they represent the majority of infected people, has led to making them more visible. However, they remain little used in clinical trials, while the dosage of treatments for men does not necessarily correspond to the needs of women.
In a stigmatizing disease, not being represented is difficult. Anne thus recounts the weight of this loneliness: "I was out of the picture, marginalized before the release of my book because I hadn't met people like me!"
In terms of maternity, pregnancies are medically supported in units where only HIV-positive women are found. "It can be reassuring for those who wanted to keep it secret, but also cumbersome to be separated from the rest. Especially since you could sometimes feel moral judgment from the outside. It is difficult to assimilate HIV as a chronic disease among others; while pregnancies can be complicated for many other chronic diseases like diabetes for example. »Raconte Anne, mother of two HIV negative children.
How to fight against the virus and the prejudices associated with it?
When Anne is asked the question, the answer gives the magnitude of the task: " we must deconstruct the representation of the virus. Today we live with it, we should not be terrorized at the idea of being HIV positive: it is better to know and deal with it quickly, than to prefer to ignore it and risk spreading it! "
The main thing is raising awareness on the subject. Education is a strong and essential means for clear action against HIV and to fight discrimination against HIV-positive women.
Preventing sexuality from childhood is a way of bringing knowledge of HIV into society. Don't be afraid to talk about it, naturally bring the subject into conversations and inform, whatever the cost.
If, from childhood, awareness-raising action must be taken, it must also continue to grow. A woman, like a man, should therefore be able to be informed about these questions in order to be able to access prevention tools in order to protect themselves and others and access care when it is necessary. Informing also means deconstructing prejudices about sexuality and HIV and combating discrimination and stigma. .
"It’s also a question of responsibility, of taking charge of your sexual health" reminds Anne with a smile.