As the country marks Women’€™s Month, a milestone is being celebrated. The search for a microbicide, which will ultimately afford many women the ability to protect themselves from getting HIV, is showing promising results. Scientists recently announced the outcome of a study that involved a vaginal gel containing an antiretroviral drug called Tenofovir, which demonstrated that it can protect women from acquiring HIV infection by about 39%.  Dr Zeda Rosenberg of the International Partnership for Microbicides says this is an unusual approach of using an antiretroviral drug as a preventative agent.

‘€œAntiretroviral drugs, when adapted for microbicides, could prevent infection, not just treat infection. We are all familiar with ARVs and how they can help bring people back to life’€¦ that are infected with HIV, once the virus has spread in the body. But, microbicides are products that are designed to prevent the virus from taking hold in the body, stopping it at a very early point in the life-cycle of HIV’€.

Dr Rosenberg said women continue to bear the brunt of HIV infection as many are not able to negotiate safe sex. The outcome of the study has been hailed as a tool that will give hope to many women who don’€™t have a say on whether or not their partners use protection during intercourse. Dr Nono Simelela, Chief Executive Officer of the South African National AIDS Council (SANAC) welcomed the study’€™s findings, but raised concerns that women are almost like second-class citizens in South Africa.

‘€œEven as we celebrate research we need to go back into a different dialogue altogether. Why have we lost the ability to respect women and their bodies? I think that dialogue should come back. Those of us who have access to people in control, we should start the dialogue of moral regeneration. We need that’€, said Simelela.

The microbicide study was done in Vulindlela in the KwaZulu-Natal midlands, a semi rural area.   More than 800 women participated in the study. The results showed that the tenofovir gel protected almost 40% of the women from contracting HIV. Dr Simelela stressed the importance of engaging women when research like this one is done. She says their understanding should not be underestimated.

‘€œWe want women to accept these products, so we need to take women along the journey of science’€¦ not making science something happening in the laboratory’€¦ people understand these things’€¦ they know how their bodies work.

Women must be part of these discussions from the beginning. If we do find a successful gel, we don’€™t start from A because women would have been aware of it. This is not mystery, but getting the information into peoples’€™ hands, so they can be empowered’€.    

South Africa has the highest number of HIV-infected people in the world with an estimate of over 5.7 million people living with HIV/AIDS ‘€“ women being the most infected.

Women’€™s rights activist Graca Machel says women need to be able to make a choice about their future. She says women need to stand in solidarity as those who marched to the Union Buildings in 1952.  

 ‘€œTwenty-thousand women protesting against passes’€¦ It was not every woman who marched that day who was confronted with pass laws. There were women of all races, social structure, urban areas, less affected by that, many rural women, but they understood the challenge of the day was a united movement in solidarity. If you feel that a woman is being humiliated by the pass laws it diminishes my dignity, because we are one movement. Solidarity among women has to come alive. It has to become part of us’€.

Machel says the rights of women need to be put at the top of government and civil society’€™s agenda. She says it is then that women will be empowered and their right to life will be upheld. She says it’€™s an anomaly that South African women, mothers and children are dying, largely because of AIDS.

‘€œSouth Africa is the only country not in conflict whose rate of child and maternal mortality are increasing. Part of this contribution for high child and maternal mortality rates is HIV/AIDS’€, says Machel.