Women around the globe are at greater risk for AIDS than ever before, said activist and pediatrician Maxine Hayes at a forum coinciding with World AIDS Day.

The forum which took place, in the Hogness Auditorium of the Health Sciences Building last night, focused on the problem of HIV/AIDS among minorities, particularly black women in the United States. The event was one of several campus activities commemorating World AIDS Day.

Hayes highlighted a new statistic from the World Health Organization that the number of women living with HIV has increased in each region of the world.

“It used to be so that when we said we had an epidemic … we could point to one place, and that was Africa,” said Hayes. “But we can’t say that anymore … it’s everywhere.”

Another bombshell Hayes dropped on the audience was the disproportionate rate of HIV among black women, who account for 80 percent of AIDS cases even though they make up less than 25 percent of the female population in the United States.

Among the reasons she cited for the increase among women were greater biological susceptibility to transmission than men, gender inequalities and transactional sex, where impoverished women, often starting in their teens, sell sex in order to provide for themselves and their families.

Hayes also pointed to the inadequacy of the “ABC” approach — abstinence, be faithful and condoms.

“Even if she practiced this, it’s still an unequal situation for her,” said Hayes, referring to adultery among husbands, cultural taboos against using condoms and the myth among men in some third world countries that sleeping with a virgin will cure AIDS.

Hayes cited several possible measures for the reduction of HIV infection among women, provided by the Global Coalition on AIDS. These include the need for universal education for girls, access to treatment, community-based care and prevention methods that would place control in the hands of women, including the female condoms and microbicides, topical HIV killing agents which are still in research and testing phases.

Hayes’ talk was preceded by a presentation by Derrick Harris, co-director of Brother to Brother, a Seattle-based organization that does outreach to black men at risk for HIV/AIDS.

Harris brought to the audience’s attention the “down low” phenomenon, where black men who live publicly as heterosexuals engage in sex with other men, resulting in a greater risk of infection among their female partners who don’t know about this “secret sex.”

Harris cited a 2003 survey by Ebony Magazine on sexuality among black women in which 47 percent of the women questioned said they did not discuss sexual concern with their doctors or even their partners, but 49 percent were concerned with the “dow low” phenomenon. Part of the difficulty is the taboo of admitting to homosexual tendencies, according to Harris, who said he still has difficulties owning up to these urges.

Harris said that he himself had been caught up in the “down low” phenomenon.

“For those people who are even more deeper than me,” said Harris, “it takes a real person to reach someone who’s on the ‘down low.’”

The solution, according to Harris, may be barbers.

Brother to Brother, which has nine chapters in cities around the US, puts most of its energy into the Barbershop Project, where barbers are trained to talk to their customers about HIV prevention and testing. Harris noted that through small talk, barbers often hear about their clients’ sexual exploits, which puts them in a position to be educators.

“It’s my firm belief that the only way to treat HIV in the ‘down low’ community is through black men,” said Harris.