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Young married women in Africa who test positive for HIV/Aids are often victims of violent relationship. A report by the Tanzania Population Council says that “young HIV-positive women aged between 18 and 29 years are 10 times more likely to report partner violence than young HIV-negative women.”
The link between violence and higher HIV infection can be explained by many factors, including coercive sexual intercourse which may directly increase a woman’s risk of infection through physical trauma.
Violence and threats of violence are a real limit for women’s ability to negotiate safe sexual behaviour, such as the use of condoms, that making them more vulnerable to HIV.
In addition, women who have been sexually abused in childhood probably participate in more sexual risk-taking behaviour as adolescents or adults, thereby increasing their risk of infection with HIV.Women who know their status do not reveal it to their spouses or partners, mostly because they fear rejection and violence.
The United Nations body on Aids, UNAids, says that in Africa, women were two to three times more likely to contract HIV than men, mostly because of physiological, cultural and economic factors.
In Kenya, for instance, the prevalence rate among women aged 15-24 years is now estimated at between 13 and 19 per cent, compared with that of males of the same age group, which ranges from five to seven per cent.
The 26 million people in sub-Saharan Africa infected with HIV, 58 per cent are female and 42 per cent are male. This has far-reaching implications for the continent’s economic development.
Women contribute to over 50 per cent of food production in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, and typically carry out the most labour-intensive farming activities. As a result, their deaths from Aids is likely to further compromise the continent’s food security situation, We have to notice that the conflicts and wars are not in favour of reducing the rate of HIV infections in the mother continent.
