Source: All Africa
Global Campaign for Microbicides (GCM) and Gender in Development Division(GIDD) will on Tuesday next week hold a two day women's HIV prevention Convention aimed at stipulating the state of the epidemic

and its impact on women and girls in the country and globally.

The convention to take place from August 9 and August 10, 2011 at the Mulungushi International Conference Centre would draw about 40 participants from the rural areas. Tansinta founder and member, Nkandu Luo said during the press briefing in Lusaka yesterday that for a long time now, HIV had had an impact which needs to be adequately addressed.

Professor Luo said when programmes on HIV prevention were being done,the issue of the epidemic having a female face was generalised.She said of the 57 per cent of people living with HIV, many were women and girls mainly because of low and inconsistency use of condom which was being controlled by men.

"Men in sub-Sahara Africa control the use of condoms and this has resulted in low and inconsistency use of the product," she said.And professor Luo said condom use still played a role in familieswhere men were circumcised because it was not a magic bullet.She said such families should match circumcision with other prevention strategies among them condom use mainly due to multiple concurrent partnerships.

"Male circumcision is not a magic bullet but only gives you about 60 per cent protection according clinical trials," he said.She added that separate platform was required to address the issue of women and HIV/AIDS.

The convention sponsored by DCM and GIDD would discuss among other things new HIV prevention technologies in Zambia and update on HIV vaccine research and would attract people from government ministries and stakeholders. 

• Zambia