HIV/AIDS: Disability, HIV find common ground
 Photo: Sven Torfinn/IRIN  |
| People with diabilities face the same HIV risks as the general population, but are often missing from HIV programmes |
That is slowly starting to change, say HIV/AIDS and disability civil society leaders, as well as UN agency health officials, as connections between the divergent groups are growing stronger and the urgent need to address this gap is being made increasingly clear after years of internal stalled progress.
"There's just a real dearth of data," said Paula Donovan, co-director of AIDS Free World, an international HIV/AIDS advocacy organization based in New York. "If a country said, 'We don't have data on disability and HIV/AIDS', then that in itself is data, but we don't see that, even. The actual activity, the expression of will, is sporadic."
More than 600 million people - 10 percent of the global population - live with disabilities, and 80 percent of them live in developing countries. This population often struggles to gain access to sex education and health services, including HIV prevention and education materials.
Yet people with disabilities engage in the same sexual behaviours that the general population does, according to a landmark 2004 Yale University/World Bank report entitled HIV/AIDS and Individuals with Disability. Additionally, women with disabilities are more vulnerable to sexual exploitation and rape than non-disabled women.
Eighty-seven percent of disability advocates, programmes and institutions from 57 countries consider HIV/AIDS "of immediate concern" to the disabled populations they serve, the report showed.
But indications that speak to the impact HIV/AIDS has on the disabled community on a global scale largely stop there.
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