Teenage girls, especially those in Sub-Saharan Africa, are experiencing the worst of the global AIDS crisis, the UN says

Teenage girls are bearing the brunt of the global HIV burden, according to a new UNICEF report.

The report, published earlier this month, found that girls between ages 10 and 19 were twice as likely to contract the disease than boys within the same age group.

In total, 98,000 adolescent girls were infected with the virus in 2022, down nearly 100,000 from the total in 2010. For comparison, just over 40,000 boys in the age group were infected last year. More than half of these infections were recorded in eastern and southern Africa.

While this highlights progress for stopping the disease globally, leaders warn that girls are being left behind.

  • @kromemEnglish
    15•11 months ago

    That’s not what it means.

    Many STDs are more likely to be transmitted to the partner receiving penetrative sex than the one penetrating. In some cases it’s as extreme as a 10:1 chance.

    So while it could relate to aspects of partner selection, given what I’ve seen before in terms of HIV transmission rates it’s probably the opposite, with young girls being less sexually active with positive partners (or in general) than young men as if they were equally active we should have expected more than a 2x increased infection rate of young girls.

    Biologically it’s not a 1:1 risk rate for transmission, which is an important confounding factor to consider in interpreting this result.

    Edit: Actually looking at the current numbers this seems like it’s equally active young men and women with almost exactly what should be expected in vaginal sex transmission rates:

    A meta-analysis of 10 studies exploring the risk of transmission through vaginal sex was published in 2009.4 It is estimated the risk of HIV transmission through receptive vaginal sex (receiving the penis in the vagina) to be 0.08% (equivalent to 1 transmission per 1,250 exposures).

    A meta-analysis of three studies exploring the risk from insertive vaginal sex (inserting the penis into the vagina) was estimated to be 0.04% (equivalent to 1 transmission per 2,500 exposures).4

    • @Earthwormjim91English
      -5•11 months ago

      No, it is exactly what it means. There’s a prevalent belief in several regions of Africa that having sex with a virgin girl will cure HIV.

      So there is a massive amount of rape of young girls by HIV+ men.

      • @kromemEnglish
        8•11 months ago

        Murray and Burnham provide no reference for this statement, probably because there is no evidence to support it. We do not claim knowledge of the entire African continent, but our research in South Africa and Namibia shows that, although the idea of a virgin sex cure is familiar in some African communities, evidence from service providers working with cases of child sexual abuse and from ethnographic and epidemiological studies of child rapists and their victims suggests that it is very rarely a motivating factor in these cases.

        This study suggests that offenders convicted of a sexual crime against children in Malawi were not motivated by a desire to be cured or “cleansed” from HIV infection. A need to fulfil their sexual urges or the disinhibiting effect of drugs or alcohol was offered by the majority of participants as excuses for their behaviour. […]

        None of the participants said that a desire to cure or avoid HIV infection motivated the abuse.

        To claim that the majority of young girls are contracting HIV because of rape specifically based on myth as motivating factor is absolutely fucking insane.

        First off, you’d need to have an idea of x = the relative percentage of sex by young women in Africa that is not consensual.

        Second, you’d need to have an idea of y = the percent of non-consensual sex that is primarily motivated by the belief sex with a virgin cures HIV.

        You are claiming that x times y is greater than 50% (to explain the 2x discrepancy between HIV infection between men and women, having rejected my hypothesis that there’s a fundamental difference in transmission rates in play).

        So for example, if you posit that half of all sex young women experience is rape, then you’d need 100% of rapes of young women to be primarily motivated by a desire to cure HIV. If you assume only 50% of rapes are thus motivated, all sex young women experience would have to be rapes.

        Given that research has shown zero percent of rapes in at least one study in Africa are primarily motivated by that, you have a bit of an uphill battle there.

        Plus the whole fact that HIV is 2x more likely to infect the woman having vaginal sex than the man still seeming to my eye to be the most likely culprit for a 2x increase in HIV rates among young women vs men.