HIV/AIDS: A Problem for Africa―A Special Problem for African Women

Abstract

A study of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa indicates the severity of the disease for the content and highlights the unequal gender distribution of the infection. Although once thought of as a disease of men, in Afica women are now being infected in greater numbers than men. In addition, HIV si becoming a disease of the young, with young women and girls much more frequently infected than young men and boys. Biological differences between women and men offer only a partial explanation for this phenomenon. For a more complete explanation we must look to African economic and political inequalities between genders. Also significant are various cultural practices and beliefs, some of which are widely distributed in the refion and some of which are specific to particular locales.