The United Nations is launching a global campaign to prevent girls and women from contracting HIV, now the leading cause of death and disease among women between the reproductive ages of 15 and 49.
The UN Aids agency and Scottish singer and Aids activist Annie Lennox unveiled the five-year action plan at a panel during a meeting to review progress towards achieving women's equality, the goal of the platform adopted at a 1994 UN conference.
It called for increased action to prevent HIV in women. But Michele Sidibe, the executive director of UNAids, said the agency's latest report in December showed the proportion of women infected with HIV has risen in many regions of the world over the past 10 years.
