Suffering women

tauringhuang.

Aug 5th 2008
From Economist.com

Why more women than men have HIV in Africa


THIS week the world's experts on AIDS are gathered in Mexico for an annual conference about the global epidemic. Some reasons for cheer exist: thanks to better provision of anti-retroviral drugs, the number of people dying from the disease has plateaued at about 2m a year. But many disturbing facts remain. One is that women, at least in sub-Saharan Africa where HIV is spread mostly through heterosexual sex (and where the disease is causing most devastation), are the more numerous victims. There are various reasons for this: it is easier for a woman to contract HIV from an infected man during sex than the other way around; in some parts of Africa, too, women are likely to become sexually active earlier than men, often taking much older (and richer) partners who proceed to infect them. Where HIV is typically spread through sharing needles—notably among drug addicts, for example in Russia and eastern Europe—men are more likely to be victims.