Sexual, racial and economic inequalities prolong the AIDS pandemic, warns the UN

The inequalities economic and social, especially racial and sexual discrimination, are prolonging the AIDS pandemic, warned the executive director of Onusida, Winnie Byanyima, in an interview with EFE.

“After 40 years of fighting HIV and AIDS, we know that inequalities drive pandemics and prevent us from ending them. And that pandemics also drive inequalities, as we saw with the covid”said Byanyima in Brasilia.

The UNAIDS director visited the Brazilian capital to launch on Tuesday the World Council on Inequality, AIDS and Pandemics, one of the initiatives with which this UN program intends to contribute to the end of AIDS by 2030.

This new body aims to “gather evidence” that shows the link between inequalities and AIDS, with the aim of helping policy makers make decisions about it.

The need for sex education

Gender inequality is one of the biggest problems in relation to AIDS, both because of the education factor and because of the risk that young women are exposed to sexual violence, a threat that increases exponentially worldwide among girls. who are not educated.

“School is the safest place to prevent, to reduce the risk of contracting HIV. If girls stayed in school, their risk of HIV infection could decrease by up to fifty%”Byanyima said.

The head of UNAIDS stressed that “education is key” but alert that “In many countries, both in Africa and in countries like Latin America, where religion and traditions are strong, sexuality education encounters resistance from parents, teachers and religious leaders.”

“In many countries we continue to fight for governments to agree to provide sex education in schools. It is a challenge, especially for girls in Latin America”he commented.

Rising risks for homosexuals

The relationship between discrimination and HIV infection reaches alarming levels in the case of homosexuals, who “They are at much higher risk of becoming infected with HIV than other men.”

In countries where same-sex relations are not penalized, this difference in infections is reduced, as is the case in Thailand, where the risk of becoming infected with HIV for homosexuals is eleven times higher than for heterosexuals.

But in a country like Malaysia, where same-sex relationships are criminalized, gay men are 74 times more at risk.

Racism and poverty make a difference

Brazil, according to Byanyima, is a “world leader” in the fight against AIDS, but it also becomes a negative example of the weight that social inequalities have in the elimination of pandemics.

In the last ten years, new HIV infections among the white population have decreased by 12.3%but, at the same time, among Afro-descendants increased a 13.4%a trend that is repeated in deaths from AIDS.

“We see this all over the world. Not only in Brazil. We see, for example, that in countries that have achieved control of the AIDS epidemic, such as Canadaas USAthere are still high levels of new infections among the poor indigenous population or the African American population in the United States”Byanyima commented.

As a result, AIDS continues to be concentrated in ethnic minorities and groups of poor people, something that partly reflects inequalities within the health system.

The Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) unites the efforts of eleven UN organizations and aims to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030, as part of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Source: EFE