format_quote Originally Posted by
NJUSA
The largest growing group of new HIV infections is among women, and the largest group of people infected with HIV in Africa always has been women. This is normally through semen, but blood is often involved, especially when it involves a victim of FGM.
Well the problem with Africa remains that no one really knows what is going on there. But apart from that I do not disagree with much of that. As for the West, well America is exceptional again, but from the US government,
http://www.niaid.nih.gov/factsheets/womenhiv.htm
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), between 2000 through 2004, the estimated number of AIDS cases in the United States increased 10 percent among females and 7 percent among males. In 2004, women accounted for 27 percent of the 44,615 newly reported AIDS cases among adults and adolescents. HIV disproportionately affects African-American and Hispanic women. Together they represent less than 25 percent of all U.S. women, yet they account for more than 79 percent of AIDS cases in women.
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TRANSMISSION
Transmission of HIV to Women
In the United States, most women are infected with HIV during sex with an HIV-infected man or while using HIV-contaminated syringes for the injection of drugs such as heroin, cocaine, and amphetamines. Of the new HIV infections diagnosed among women in the United States in 2004, CDC estimated 70 percent were attributed to heterosexual contact and 28 percent to injection drug use.
In this country, studies have shown that during unprotected heterosexual intercourse with an HIV-infected partner, women have a greater risk of becoming infected than uninfected men who have heterosexual intercourse with an HIV-infected woman. In other parts of the world, however, this is not necessarily true. In Uganda, for example, one study demonstrated that the risk of HIV transmission from woman to man was the same as from man to woman. This difference may be due to the lack of circumcision in Ugandan men.
Studies in both the United States and abroad have demonstrated that STIs, particularly infections that cause ulcerations of the vagina (for example, genital herpes, syphilis, and chancroid), greatly increase a woman's risk of becoming infected with HIV. NIAID-sponsored cohort studies in the United States have also found a number of other factors to be associated with an increased risk of heterosexual HIV transmission, including alcohol use, history of childhood sexual abuse, current domestic abuse, and use of crack/cocaine.
Clearly something very odd is going on in the African-American and Hispanic communities. It may have to do with a reduced ability to say no to certain high risk behaviours. But HIV infection is still associated with a range of pathologies. As infection is self-reported, and many people may not want to admit to behaviours other than heterosexual sex, even these figures have to be treated with caution. However, generally speaking, it seems clear: HIV is associated with drug use and anal intercourse. It is difficult, in the West, for a woman to get it through normal heterosexual intercourse - especially if she is white, it is much harder for a man do to so. Which is not saying that men, especially white men, ought to go out there and do what they like, but the risks have to be weighed up carefully.
From Wikipedia
Estimated per act risk for acquisition of HIV by exposure route[13]
Exposure Route Estimated infections per 10,000 exposures to an infected source
Blood Transfusion 9,000[14]
Childbirth 2,500 [15]
Needle-sharing injection drug use- 67 [16]
Receptive anal intercourse* 50 [17][18]
Percutaneous needle stick 30 [19]
Receptive penile-vaginal intercourse* 10 [17][18][20]
Insertive anal intercourse* 6.5 [17][18]
Insertive penile-vaginal intercourse* 5 [17][18]
Receptive fellatio* 1 [18]
Insertive fellatio* 0.5 [18]
*Assuming no condom use
Obviously Europe, with smaller high risk groups of African-American and Hispanic women, is going to report even lower rates.