Over the past 15 years, the world has seen a change in the trajectory of the AIDS epidemic. Through enormous global prevention and treatment efforts, new infections have fallen by nearly 40 percent, and increased access to treatment has enabled millions more with HIV to live productively.
But the advances we have made have not benefited everyone equally. We are still failing in one crucial area: preventing HIV infections in young women.
Women and girls become infected at disproportionately higher rates than men and boys. In sub-Saharan Africa, where the epidemic has taken the greatest toll, young women are twice as likely to be infected as young men. HIV robs women of their lives, children of their mothers, families of their caretakers and communities of their workforce. Around the world, nearly 2,500 women are infected by HIV every day, and it remains the leading killer of women ages 15 to 44 worldwide.