Reaching Out
to Our Sisters
Chicago women’s
conference offers
knowledge and support
by Enid Vázquez
As this issue geared up to go to press, the Chicago Women’s AIDS Project (CWAP) and one of the local branches of the national Women’s Interagency HIV Study (WIHS), located at the CORE Center, held their second annual conference for their clients and patients, called Reaching Out to Our Sisters. It was a chance for women to gather together in support and to learn more about HIV.
The event included workshops on depression, living your best life, recovery, spirituality, aging, and supporting transgender women. The workshop “Writing Your Story” was conducted by the Chicago-based activist/literary duo AquaMoon (visit www.spokenexistence.com).
Gathered together in the auditorium, the approximately 200 women in attendance listened (and told their own stories) as Dr. Mardge Cohen, principle investigator of the Chicago WIHS, discussed the powerful case for HIV medications, listed the negative statistics for women (especially black women), and addressed the need to “reach out to our sisters.”
Dr. Cohen said that women made up 8% of U.S. AIDS cases in the late 1980s, but today they make up 27%. 83% of women become infected through heterosexual sex and 16% through drug use; however, the sexual activity is sometimes with drug-using men, so drugs aren’t completely out of the picture, she noted. Black women make up 66% of all AIDS cases in women, but only 14% of the U.S. population.
“So women are doing worse, and black women are doing worse,” said Dr. Cohen. “One of the ways we measure worse is mortality—people die.”
According to June 2007 statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), increases in persons dying of HIV/AIDS were seen in three different groups: women, black people, and individuals over the age of 45.
Moreover, a black woman is 13 to 20 times more likely to die of HIV/AIDS than a white woman. Black men are also more likely to die compared to white men. And older black women are 20 times more likely to die.
Yet, there were places in the U.S. where the death rate was the same between races.
“Why the difference?” asked Dr. Cohen. “Lack of insurance. Lack of trust—not treated equally.” She noted lack of treatment access in general. This has been called “poor HAART diffusion.” (HAART stands for “highly active antiretroviral therapy,” or HIV treatment.)
“The data’s in… by and large, if you take HAART, you don’t progress to AIDS, you don’t die [of AIDS-related causes],” said Dr. Cohen. “It’s not negotiable. We want your T-cells to go up and your viral load to go down.”
Now that newer HIV drugs are easier to take and therapy is more successful, other causes of death are taking on a greater importance in the U.S. epidemic.
“People are dying of non-AIDS related things,” Dr. Cohen explained. “There are other issues that are very important, like liver disease, heart disease, and cancers—smoking, which we could do something about. It’s very important to know your hepatitis status. Get your Pap test. Stop smoking.”
Smoking doesn’t just lead to lung cancer, she said. “In spite of the emphysema, despite the dysfunction of the arteries that leads to heart disease, it also hurts your HIV. Your viral load doesn’t respond as well.”
She pointed out the success story of pregnancy in HIV. Thanks to HIV testing and treatment during pregnancy, transmission from mother to child has virtually been eliminated in the United States. “We have to tell our daughters, there’s trust and there’s lack of trust, but we can take control of our health.”
“HIV defines the fault lines that divide our society,” she concluded. “We need to make access totally decent and available to everyone. Tell other women. Reach out to your sisters—that’s the name and the message of the conference. HIV meds are important, so make the clinic work for you and make them work for everyone.”
