Women's rights top in global AIDS battle

An international AIDS NGO has announced plans to put women's rights at the centre of its new initiative to curb the spread HIV/AIDS. At the recent launch of its "Women's Leadership Initiative", the Washington-based International AIDS Trust said women were fast becoming the new face of HIV/AIDS in the hardest hit regions of the world. "Women have moved from the periphery of this epidemic to the heart of it in less than a decade," president of the Trust, Sandra Thurman, said in a statement. In 2000, women comprised 50 percent of adults living with HIV/AIDS worldwide for the first time since the pandemic began more than 20 years ago. "If current trends continue we'll see a larger percentage of women infected and affected. Unless we address these fundamental gender issues, we won't be able to do anything about the HIV/AIDS epidemic," Thurman added.