The lower social status of women, poverty, and illiteracy are contributing factors to the high rate of HIV infection in women. Women constitute about 60 percent of world's 1 billion poor, and two-thirds of poor women are also illiterate, said Marina Mahathir, president of the Malaysian AIDS Council and daughter of the Prime Minister of Malaysia. According to Mahathir, the lack of sex education in Malaysian schools and difficulties in legally safeguarding women's rights were some of the main obstacles to preventing HIV infection in Malaysian women. Women thus feel insecure and afraid to assert their rights, including the right to protect themselves from infection. The issue of marital rape is not recognized in many societies, she added.
Women also have to be caregivers and are usually unpaid, untrained, and unrecognized.
Infected and affected women frequently face isolation because of stigma and discrimination. Clinical manifestations of HIV infection in Asia and the Pacific Janak K. Maniar, MD, of the Godulkas Tejpal Hospital and STD Clinic, Bombay, India, presented an impressive clinical picture of 7200 HIV-infected patients who were studied from March 1991 to March 1997. Thirty percent of the patients were women, and 90.5 percent of the infections were sexually acquired. Maniar also noted that fewer than 40 percent of patients taking antituberculous drugs were compliant, a statistic that was particularly worrisome given the implications for multidrug resistance. Antiretroviral therapy in Asia Many sessions at the Congress were devoted to antiretroviral therapy and the optimal use of immunologic and virologic parameters in assessing treatment outcomes.