HIV/AIDS and Agriculture in Africa: The Woman's Role in Agricultural Policy Formulation and Implementation

HIV/AIDS and Agriculture in Africa: The Woman's Role in Agricultural Policy Formulation and Implementation

Emmanuel Ohene Afoakwa

Human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immuno-deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is frequently perceived as an individual health problem or as an epidemic with effects on morbidity or mortality, health care and costs. From such a perspective, the" AIDS epidemic" emerges as a series of more or less clearly defined epidemics, each with characteristics of the subsystem in which it occurs and, together, forming a pandemic. HIV/AIDS is transmitted through heterosexual and homosexual intercourse, intravenous drug use (IDU), homosexual or based on blood transfusion. These aspects are very important, but they are not the only possible dimensions of the epidemic (Semba and Tang, 1999). Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for more than 70 per cent of all HIV/AIDS cases globally. It is the only region where women living with HIV/AIDS outnumber men. Nearly 25 million Africans are living with HIV/AIDS, the vast majority of them adults in the prime of their working and parenting lives. Some 15 million people in Africa have already died of AIDS, with devastating social and economic consequences (UNAIDS, 1999). In the 30 sub-Saharan African countries with the highest HIV/AIDS prevalence levels, the average life expectancy has already started to decline, standing at about 47 years, roughly seven years lower than it would have been in the absence of the pandemic. The lifetime risk of dying from AIDS has

Women and Gender Studies

2005

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English