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Date Posted: 20:05:14 07/24/02 Wed
Author: moonotter
Subject: Women Lost to AIDS Will Unbalance Africa's Population

Women Lost to AIDS Will Unbalance Africa's Population


Reuters Health Information 2002. © 2002 Reuters Ltd.
Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.


BARCELONA, Spain (Reuters) Jul 09 - High rates of AIDS among young African women will lead to a population imbalance that will take generations to overcome and make the AIDS epidemic even worse, a top UN official said on Tuesday.
Experts called for more prevention efforts to be targeted at young women of child-bearing age to counter the spread of HIV among them.

United Nations figures show that women make up 58% of people in sub-Saharan Africa living with HIV/AIDS. Young women in the region are now up to six times more likely than young men to be infected with HIV, a report by the UN Population Fund indicates.

The result would be a hole in the "age pyramid" that had only been seen before in times of war, Dr. Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS, said. In wartime, mainly men were affected, but, among the young infected by HIV in Africa, it was mostly women, he told a news conference at the International AIDS Conference.

This would cut birth rates because women will die young and many children that are born will become orphans, Dr. Piot said.

"There will be societies where in a certain age group there will be far more men than women and that in itself is going to make the spread of HIV even worse because...there will be more men who will have sex with the same female partner," he said.

Dr. Piot said that African teenage girls were generally not infected by boys of their own age, but by older men. "That is one of the major driving forces of HIV in young people in sub-Saharan Africa," he added.

Suman Mehta, HIV/AIDS coordinator for the UN Population Fund, said many older men used teenage prostitutes while in some countries, "sugar daddies" were common. "Some HIV-positive men feel that if they have sex with virgins they can be cured of the virus," she added.

Dr. Piot said there was also a lot of "transactional sex" such as between teachers and students.

Benjamin Raletsatsi, of the Botswana Family Welfare Association, said sexually active young people in his country often did not even know how HIV was contracted.

"The message is very clear," Mehta said. "We must act immediately to prevent new infections, to halt the epidemic, to save lives. It is imperative that we reach all persons at risk of infection with information, knowledge, skills and the means to protect themselves from infection."

The UN experts called for global access to both male and female condoms and Dr. Piot said there was a need for greater investment in the development of vaginal microbicides aimed at killing HIV.



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