HIV/AIDS Among Women and Men

The Reproductive Risk Index includes separate data on HIV prevalence among men and women. The highest rates of HIV infection are among women and men in Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Zambia and South Africa. In eleven countries covered in this study, HIV has infected at least 10 percent of the adult population and has cut life expectancy by almost a decade, ranging from a loss of 5 years in Mozambique to 19 years in Zimbabwe.

AIDS is one of the leading killers of our time. In 2000, 4.7 million adults around the world became infected with the human immuno-deficiency virus (HIV) and another 2.5 million died of AIDS. Over 95 percent of these deaths and new infections occurred in the developing world. Sub-Saharan Africa is the epicenter of the pandemic, with more than 70 percent of all new infections and 80 percent of deaths in 2000. In some African countries, a quarter or more of adults are infected with HIV and across the region, women account for 55 percent of all infected people.

AIDS kills people at the height of their reproductive and productive years, often leaving women enough time to bear children, but not enough to raise them. Where the epidemic is well advanced, it adversely affects the well-being of families and precarious economies.UNAIDS, the United Nations agency responsible for addressing HIV/AIDS, estimates that at the end of 1999, 13.2 million children below the age of 15 had lost their mothers or both parents to AIDS, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa.

High mortality and widespread ill health related to HIV infection is impeding economic growth by disabling the work force and depleting already limited household and public resources. Health budgets in many of these hard-hit countries amount to less than US $50.00 per person per year, nowhere near the cost of expensive drug therapies available to infected individuals in wealthier nations.

In sub-Saharan Africa, where HIV infection rates are the highest in the world, condom use is lowest, at one percent of married couples. With growing numbers of infections among women due the increase in heterosexual transmission of HIV, the need for female-controlled methods has taken on greater urgency. So far, however, financial and cultural obstacles limit the availability and use of female condoms. And, for now, microbicides—creams or gels a woman could use to protect herself from HIV infection when she cannot negotiate use of a condom by her partner—remain in the safety testing phase.

Living With HIV/AIDS

In these ten countries, an estimated 10 percent or more of the adult population (ages 15-49) were living with HIV/AIDS in 1999.

Source: UNAIDS. Report on the global HIV/AIDS epidemic: June 2000 (Geneva: UNAID, 2000).