EUROPE/ITALY - World AIDS Day: awareness campaign focuses on women. Initiatives, photograph exhibition organised by Spallanzani Institute in Rome

Rome (Fides Service) - On the occasion of World AIDS Day on 1 December the Spallanzani Italian national institute for infectious diseases in Rome which specialises in treatment and research on HIV/AIDS, has organised a series of initiatives, meetings and press conferences as well as an exhibition of photographs, “Dal Silenzio alla Parola, se mi raccontassero dell’Aids”, [From silence to words - if they had only told me about AIDS] promoted by Doctors without Frontiers.
This year the campaign to increase awareness about AIDS focuses on women who are the most vulnerable to the HIV virus. Difference in conditions and opportunities between men and women in many cultures, violence, scarce information on prevention, help spread HIV/AIDS among women who are about half the total number of cases.
In some African countries 60% of HIV/AIDS affected persons aged 15 and 24 are women. In Sub-Saharan Africa a young woman is three times more vulnerable than a young man of the same age.
In western countries AIDS strikes mainly among poor, less educated, ethnic minority women often without health insurance or access to treatment.
Women have always played a prominent role in the home, in society, bearing and caring for children and assisting sick members of the family, but the HIV epidemic has increased the already heavy burden of women. Where poverty is added to disease the price paid by women in physical and psychological terms becomes unbearable.
The world AIDS awareness campaign intends to encourage individuals and institutions to reflect on the responsibility to help fight this epidemic and help those who suffer.
(AP) (23/11/2004 Agenzia Fides; Righe:31; Parole:371)