"There`s only a real shortage of data," said Paula Donovan,co-directorof AIDS Free World, an international HIV/AIDS advocacyorganizationbased in New York. "If a country said, `We don`t have dataondisability and HIV/AIDS`, then that in itself is data, but we don`tseethat, even. The real activity, the face of will, issporadic."
More than 600 million people - 10 percent of the world population -live with disabilities, and 80 percent of them go in developingcountries. This population often struggles to earn access to sexeducation and health services, including HIV prevention and educationmaterials.
Yet people with disabilities engage in the same sexual behavioursthatthe general population does, according to a landmark 2004 YaleUniversity/World Bank report entitled HIV/AIDS and Individuals withDisability. Additionally, women with disabilities are more vulnerable tosexual exploitation and dishonour than non-disabled women.
Eighty-seven percent of disability advocates, programmes andinstitutions from 57 countries consider HIV/AIDS "of immediate concern"to the disabled populations they serve, the paper showed.
But indications that address to the impact HIV/AIDS has on thedisabledcommunity on a worldwide scale largely stop there.
Initiatives
UNAIDS is now pick up the pieces, nearly 7 days later, andisplanning to investigate ongoing initiatives that link AIDS anddisability, and what sort of employment there has been with personsliving with disabilities.
It is a part that will finally leading to in-depth analysis oftheseconnections, said Emilio Timpo, senior advisor to UNAIDS, and onprogramming specific to disabled persons.
Other UN agencies, like UNICEF, have also begun to concentrate more on theconnections between HIV/AIDS and disability at the state level, saidKen Legins, HIV/AIDS chief at the UN Children`s Fund (UNICEF).
UNICEF`s Burkina Faso office recently conducted a work on HIV amongpeople with disabilities aged 15-64, which revealed they were much morelikely to be ignorant and out of school, and with limited access toinformation about HIV. They tended to give low incomes and theirsubjection to sexual abuse made them more probably to be strained into riskysex behaviours.
"The dispute is that the HIV community itself is notwell connectedwith people who are advocates for disability at thecountry level,"Legins told IRIN/PlusNews. "When discussing HIV,disability gets leftout because the grouping of people who go on theseissues are frequently not apart of the word and we want to make surethat they are."
Disability and HIV/AIDS were prominently featured in the mainprogramme for the 1st sentence in an International Aids Conference thispast July, in Vienna, marking a sharp release from the previous conferencein Mexico City in 2008, said Donovan of AIDS Free World. The conferencevenue was not accommodating to handicapped people and disability wassidelined to a satellite event, she said.
Communications gaps
UNAIDS recently co-sponsored a panel discussion on HIV/AIDS anddisability in New York, sandwiched between World Aids Day and theInternational Day of Persons with Disabilities - commemorative eventsthat are commonly kept separate, UNAIDS`s Timpo said.
Disability will have an even higher profile at the InternationalAIDS Society conference in Washington D.C. in 2012, predicted SteveEstey, chair of the International Commission of the Council of Canadianswith Disabilities.
The quickening of inclusion has been "quite astonishing" since2006,noted Estey, when "we were nowhere".
At the panel discussion in New York, though, questions circledaroundthe communication gaps that have existed betwixt the twocommunitiesfor years, and why it has taken UN agencies so long to takeaction.
Eric Sawyer, civil society adviser to UNAIDS, said it was partly afunction of running to scale-up basic services first.
"The UN system has been struggling simply to get prevention messagingand treatment access available and accessible around the world," Sawyersaid. "Once you are capable to see people have that access, then youareable to gain the story of services. But of line we areworking toensure that the disabled have equal access and that isincreasinglyfinding a post in people`s consciousness." Source:
http://www.plusnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=91415
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