Women's rights, more health staff needed to fight AIDS in Africa: reports

Discrimination against women and a lack of health-care workers mean people infected with HIV/AIDS are dying unnecessarily in southern Africa, according to two new reports.

On Friday, Physicians for Human Rights released a study of 2,000 women in Botswana and Swaziland. The report concludes four factors contribute to women's vulnerability to HIV:

* Women's lack of control over sexual decision making, such as the decision to use a condom, and multiple partners by both men and women.
* Prevalence of HIV-related stigma and discrimination, which hinders testing and disclosing of an HIV positive status.
* Gender-discriminatory beliefs linked to sexual risk taking.
* Failure of traditional and government leaders to promote the equality, autonomy, and economic independence of women.

"If we are to reduce the continuing, extraordinary HIV prevalence in Botswana and Swaziland, particularly among women, the countries' leaders need to enforce women's legal rights," Karen Leiter, the study's lead investigator, said in a statement.

The field study surveyed beliefs and how they are linked to sexual behaviour. In Botswana, for example, participants who had discriminatory beliefs about the role of women had nearly three times higher odds of reporting unprotected sex with a non-primary partner in the previous year, the report's authors found.

The group recommended both African governments end discrimination against women in marriage, inheritance, property and employment laws, as well as strengthen legislation to end impunity for gender-based violence and ensure women are protected from violence in all forms, including marital rape.
Too few doctors, nurses to give drugs

On Thursday, the international aid group Médecins Sans Frontières released a report saying people infected with HIV/AIDS in southern Africa have drugs to treat their conditions, but there are too few doctors and nurses to administer the medication.

As the availability of drugs and clinics improves, Western donors should focus on improving wages and working conditions for health-care workers so they can stay in their own countries rather than emigrate, the report recommended.

The report on Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique and South Africa said more than one million people need life-saving antiretroviral treatment but do not have access to it.

In Malawi, where the rate of HIV infection may be as high as 30 per cent, there are two doctors for every 100,000 people. The World Health Organization's minimum standard is 20 doctors for every 100,000 patients.
'It feels like we are losing the battle'

"Clinics are absolutely saturated, waiting lists are growing, and it feels like we are losing the battle," said Dr. Eric Goemaere, head of MSF's program in Khayelitsha, a Cape Town township in South Africa.

Countries are trying to cope by allowing nurses to do work normally done by doctors and community workers to do the work of nurses, but the need for more skilled staff remains, the group said.

Nurses have left for better-paying jobs in the private sector or abroad, said Mpumelelo Mantangana, a nurse at the clinic in Khayelitsha, whose workload has increased.

"I work purely because of passion for what we are doing. People come in and they are very sick and we see them get better. That is the only thing which gives us strength," she told Associated Press at the clinic, where long lines of people waited patiently on wooden benches.