Naina Khanna is the director of policy and community organizing at Women Organized to Respond to Life-threatening Disease (WORLD) and the coordinator for the U.S. Positive Women's Network (PWN), a national membership body of HIV-positive women working for federal policy change. For more information about the PWN, please visit www.pwn-usa.org
As a woman living with HIV and working with HIV-positive women throughout the U.S., I know all too well what character assassinations, funding restrictions, and the overall environment can do to women.
In a disturbing trend, women-centered HIV services are being quietly defunded. This means HIV-postive women have fewer places to go for peer support, mental health and other critical services.
Although HIV is considered a chronic manageable condition in the U.S., AIDS-related illnesses continue to be the leading cause of death among African-American women aged 25 to 34 years old.
Many Americans think of HIV as a men’s disease — even though women comprise almost a third of HIV infections.
