The face of today's HIV/AIDS sufferer is increasingly likely to be that of a woman.

So this year's World Population Day, which falls today, will highlight the fight to empower women in the hope of better tackling the spread of the disease.

Worldwide, 45 million people are infected with the HIV virus. Each day AIDS kills 8,000, a rate that must not be allowed to continue to grow.

Increasingly, HIV/AIDS is affecting women. More than 20 years into it, women account for nearly half of those living with HIV.

There are 840,000 people in China who are HIV positive, and 80,000 have developed AIDS. The United Nations warns that 10 million people could be infected in the country by 2010 if preventative measures are not taken.

Often it is women that know less about how HIV/AIDS is transmitted than men. What little they do know may be rendered useless by discrimination and violence, by powerlessness to refuse sex or negotiate safe sex, especially in a marriage.

The key to turning the tide in the fight against HIV/AIDS is empowering women and helping them protect themselves and their families.

Events are being staged across the world today to urge political leaders to help shield women from HIV infection by strengthening their rights, encouraging medical research and supporting campaigns for public awareness that reach out to those that are most at risk.

On World AIDS Day on December 1 last year, the spotlight was finally shone on the plight of women, with the aim of raising public awareness, as information is the key to prevention.

Women are often sidelined in the fight against the disease, but tackling its spread requires everyone's participation.

Preventative methods such as the ABC approach Abstinence, Be faithful and use Condoms are helpful, but not enough to protect women when gender inequality is pervasive.

Empowering women allowing choice in marriage, sexual relations and condom use is not just a political slogan, but a realistic approach.

Women's ability to exert control is fundamental to empowerment and equality. When a woman can plan her family, she can plan the rest of her life.

When her rights to plan her family in terms of birth timing and spacing, and to make decisions free of discrimination, coercion and violence are promoted and protected, she will have the freedom to participate more fully and equally in society.

Poverty and low social status aside, stereotypes, stigma and discrimination continue to form a tragic nexus with HIV infection.

If the disease is to be controlled, women must be valued as worthy of protection, their voices must be heard and their interests considered.

The anti-AIDS campaign must include strategies that recognize the physical and socio-economic vulnerability of women.

Women will continue to be at risk of infection if men continue to ignore safe sex messages, especially in male-dominated societies where women have few options when it comes to protecting themselves during sex.

Each woman is a unique and valuable human being entitled to equal opportunities and universally adopted human rights, no matter where she is born or where she lives.

Women's empowerment benefits everyone women, men, girls and boys alike.

(China Daily July 11, 2005)