单项选择题

A few months ago, on a trip to Africa, I met with a group of women in Kibera, the biggest slum in Kenya. These women ranged in age from 16 to 45 but had one thing in common: AIDS had devastated their lives. A woman I’’ll call Chanya told me her story. Chanya is a mother in her 30s trying to raise four children. She does not fit the typical profile of a person living with AIDS— at least not the profile that prevails in the West. She is not a man who has sex with men; she is not a sex worker; she does not use IV drugs. She has engaged in no behavior at all that is high risk for AIDS, except for one— she got married. Her husband, tragically, did engage in high-risk behavior: he had unprotected sex outside his marriage. Chanya’’s story is not rare. Why are women so vulnerable Physiological differences make women twice as likely as men to contract HIV from an infected partner during sex. In many countries, sexual inequality compounds the hazard by making it difficult, if not impossible, for women to enforce their choices about whom they have sex with, or to insist that men wear condoms. But one of the deadliest problems is that women simply don’’t have the tools to protect themselves. Despite the array of breakthroughs we’’ve seen for AIDS treatment, prevention efforts still rely on the three practices described by the abbreviation ABC ("Abstain, be faithful, use condoms"). These approaches work, and we must encourage them, but they all depend on a man’’s cooperation. For millions of married women, abstinence is unrealistic, being faithful is insufficient and the use of condoms is not under their control. Through our foundation, my husband, Bill, and I are working to develop tools that can put the power to prevent AIDS into the hands of women. Microbicides are one exciting new prevention tool in development. These are colorless, odorless gels that a woman could apply — without her partner’’s knowledge— to prevent sexual transmission of HIV. Researchers are also studying other promising measures that could give women the power to protect themselves with-out depending on their partners. Ten years ago, 1 percent of women in South Africa had contracted HIV; today the number is 25 percent. These women are living a nightmare, but we in rich countries are the ones who have to wake up. We need to develop prevention tools that can give women a chance to defend themselves. We need to deliver them as soon as they’’re available, and we need to deploy now the prevention tools we already have. Sadly, nothing can come fast enough for Chanya. But if we hurry, we can deliver these new advances in time to protect her children. The best interpretation of the italicized sentence in the last paragraph is________.