Women and HIV essays

Women and HIV essays HIV has been a steadily increasing disease in the United States over the last twenty years. In the past year alone two million new women have become infected with the disease while eighteen point five were already carriers. Roughly one point one million women died last year due to this tragic illness. IT is sad to see that the death rate for women is up three percent while it males its currently down by about fifteen percent. Why do we think this is? Many of the new pills and treatments that are being put out on todays market have only been tested on men so that when women go and purchase them for their own use they are proven non effective or leave severe side effects. Women only make up a mere twelve percent of all the clinical trails that are going on while they represent eighteen percent of this epidemic in the United States. Some say that it is easier for a female to go and get herself an ATZ (which is the prevention of transmission to her babies) than it is for her to go out and get herself treatment if she is already infected. In May of 1997 a third national conference was held where about 500 infected women marched for their own awareness. They marched around from lecture to lecture taking over microphones and speaking out to the public. They wanted to know what the government was doing for them? These women wanted to know that if a cure was found was it going to be effective for them because all these clinical trails were not being performed on them. They want a change in the course of the HIV and AIDS research so that their issues will receive equal attention. A woman by the name of Michelle Lopez, a positive AIDS activist talked about how happy she was that her gay brothers were dying at a much slower rate and have an easy access to all these new treatments but at the same time she was very upset that her death rates are going on and dying off faster. She says, What is going on in the w...