Building Grassroots Power and Leadership for Women Living with Hiv/Aids

The Story of an Decimated Community The Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) did not reach Vietnam until 1990 (National Committee for AIDS, Drug and Prostitution Prevention and Control, 2012), but its spread was as fast and expansive as anywhere else in the world. At the beginning, intravenous drug users (IDU) and female sex workers (FSW) were the major deliverers of the epidemic. However, over 20 years, it has ubiquitously infected some other groups, including mobile workers, men who have sex with men (MSM) and sexual partners of these aforementioned. As of today, the epidemic has been fairly concentrated, both among groups, gender-wise, age-wise and geographically. The highest HIV-transmission prevalence rates were found in MSM, IDU and FSW, at 16.7%, 13.4% and 3%, respectively. All 63 provinces and municipalities have reported HIV cases, more than 80% of which includes young patients aged 20 – 39 years old. The ratio of HIV-positive women to men, at the same time, is also slowly yet steadily increasing at 31:69 (Ministry of Health, 2012). The group of women living with HIV/AIDS, one might presume from all of these demographics, is made up of mostly FSW. The assumption might be more or less accurate. The National HIV Sentinel Surveillance Survey with behavioral component (Ministry of Health, 2011) estimates that many FSW tend to engage in multiple high-risk behaviors, commonly unprotected sexual activities and syringe-sharing drug injection, thus increasing their marginalization to the epidemic. Nonetheless, the survey finds that in 2011, the HIV prevalence among this group has dropped and now remains at the lowest ever (3%), indicating that FSW might no longer be the majority among the HIV-infected women. As a matter of fact, preliminary data from a forthcoming study by UN Women and UNAIDS (2012) suggests that a considerable number of them are singularly infected through intimate partner transmission (IPV), or in other words, by their HIV-positive husbands or

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