If I kept it to myself - World YWCA

Young women intervene in a world with AIDS
TOOL BOX
Give a Helping Hand
Comprehensive Care and Support
With the number of new HIV infections rising in most countries, the demand
for care and support is continuously increasing, thus posing tremendous
challenges to healthcare services and community institutions and
organisations responding to the pandemic.
There is a difference between active participation and observation. Being
sympathetic is just not enough. It is time for action so that we can effect
changes that are necessary within our communities.
Women living with HIV and AIDS need:
• Access to information relating to HIV and AIDS and their sexual and
reproductive health and rights. Most importantly they need support to
access these rights
• Economic empowerment so that women can be free to make informed
choices about their lives and their health. Most women in developing
countries are economically dependent on their husbands or male relatives;
therefore they cannot leave when they are being exposed to HIV and other
STDs
• To develop negotiation skills as in many countries it is unacceptable for a
woman to ask her husband or partner to wear a condom or to stop him from
being in a relationship having more than one partner
• Access to medication that can prevent passing HIV onto their babies
• Antenatal and other friendly health care services, as being pregnant
exposes a woman to lowered immunity
• Support, as women are the main carers, but if the same woman is sick a
man seldom looks after her and when a female member of the family dies,
her children are generally passed on to other female relatives to look after
• Laws that protect them against wife inheritance and sexual cleansing
among many other traditions. The practices originally supposed to protect
women are now placing them at special risk and are common practice in
many African countries
• More research relating to women’s health issues and HIV and AIDS.
• Governments to ensure that women have access to treatment for HIV
and AIDS and also treatment for opportunistic infections, such as TB and
sexually transmitted diseases.
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