Every year, March 10 marks the National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. Coordinated by the Office on Women’s Health, the day is meant to encourage nationwide discussion about HIV and AIDS among women and girls.

National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day provides an opportunity to educate women and girls about prevention, testing, and how to live a healthy life even after becoming infected with HIV.

To meet these goals, organizations across the country are sponsoring events to jumpstart dialogue about HIV and AIDS.

The Office on Women’s Health has also offered suggestions to individuals interested in getting involved with the effort. Suggested ideas include holding a health fair, collaborating with local media to create a news story, organizing a walk to raise awareness, fundraising for an HIV/AIDS organization, or hosting a discussion in local community centers.

The objective of hosting local events is ultimately to raise awareness about HIV and AIDS among women. According to UNAIDS (the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS), HIV is the leading cause of death for women of reproductive age worldwide.

In 2008, the majority of the 33.4 million people living with HIV in the world were women.

To address this issue, UNAIDS, the International AIDS Society, and fourteen other organizations have drawn up a scientific research agenda.

This agenda details twenty specific recommendations to improve HIV research related to women and children. To implement these recommendations, the agenda suggests investing more money in research, increasing data sharing about HIV and women, and encouraging researchers to categorize clinical data according to gender.

Many of the recommendations of the report deal with mother-to-child transmission of HIV. This mode of transmission is one of the principal routes of spreading HIV, which is why UNAIDS has issued a call to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV by 2015.

Recently, the Global Fund has projected that the UNAIDS’ goal is within reach. According to the Global Fund 2010 Results Report, if the current rate of investment in HIV and AIDS related endeavors continues, then the goal of eradicating mother-to-child transmission may very well be possible by 2015.

In South Africa, for example, efforts to provide treatment have expanded over the past several years. The number of individuals receiving antiretroviral therapy has increased 53 percent from 2007 to 2008, which has led to a simultaneous decrease in mortality rates.

In addition to today being National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, such promising results are further reason to continue the dialogue on HIV and AIDS and to spread education regarding prevention, testing, treatment, and healthy living.

For more information, please see the AIDS.gov and UNAIDS Web sites.