Science Ignores AIDS in Women, Says Nobel Nominee

In an Interview with Inter Press Service, Nobel Peace Prize nominee Patricia Pérez worried that scientific research has not yet focused on the specific effects of HIV on women.  Pérez stated:

The health policies don't have a gender perspective. There are no specific studies of how the virus and the treatments affect our bodies in particular. We have hormonal differences, differences in the reproductive system, a greater predisposition for certain types of cancer, and all of this is just barely beginning to come to light because of pressure from us.

Until recently, they demanded that we didn't have more children. If you became pregnant you were a criminal. These problems have to do with a cultural question that AIDS brings into sharp focus. In Latin America, we women are always a step farther behind, and AIDS demonstrates that disparity in a cruel way.

Pérez was diagnosed with HIV two decades ago, when she was 24, and was told she had only two years to live.  She later founded the International Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS (ICW). Pérez has been called on by Kofi Annan to monitor the progress of the UN Special Session on HIV/AIDS and was nominated for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize by the First Lady of Honduras.