New AIDS initiative to put women first

UNAIDS has launched a new global HIV/AIDS initiative that seeks to put women at the heart of new projects tackling the pandemic. Peter Piot, the executive director of UNAIDS, said efforts to fight the pandemic were failing because they were not reaching women and girls, who are most affected in developing countries. In a statement Piot said: "Half of all people affected by HIV/AIDS are women - in Africa it is up to 60 percent. Teenage girls are two-and-a-half times more likely to become infected than boys of their age, and they have not been infected by boys but by older men." The new initiative, "Global Coalition on Women and AIDS", was launched amidst findings that sexual fidelity by women was no protection against HIV, because studies showed higher rates of infection by husbands and long-term partners.