Posted on 04/29/2003 2:34:58 PM PDT by Polycarp
|
29 April 2003
Volume 5/ Number 13
Dear Colleague:
In Africa, nearly 6 out of 10 victims of HIV/AIDS are women. Why does the disease disproportionately strike African women? Because, say the gender feminists at the United Nations, they are powerless to refuse sex with HIV-positive men. We disagree with this ideologically-motivated assessment. We believe that the targeting of women and girls for invasive contraceptive, sterilization and abortion procedures by so-called Sexual and Reproductive Health programs is largely responsible.
Steven W. Mosher
President
African Women and AIDS
An examination of HIV/AIDS statistics by region and by gender reveals a curious anomaly. In areas of the world where the primary means of transmission is assumed to be heterosexual sex, such as sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa and the Middle East, and the Caribbean, the majority of HIV-positive adults are women. The United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS
(UNAIDS) and the World Health Organization have recently called attention to this disparity in their AIDS Epidemic Update. In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, they report that 58 % of those who have HIV/AIDS are
women.(1) In the younger age groups the disparity is even higher: “[O]verall about twice as many young women as men are infected in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2001, an estimated 6-11 percent of young women aged 15-24 were living with HIV/AIDS, compared to 3-6% of young men.”(2)
These results are surprising because they appear to contradict what we know about human sexual behavior. Cross-culturally, men are more promiscuous than women. They have more sexual partners before marriage and higher rates of marital infidelity. Moreover, some of their numbers patronize prostitutes, who are a prime vector for AIDS transmission. These are all behaviors which expose men to a greater risk of sexually contracting HIV/AIDS.
“Why do young African women appear so prone to HIV infection?” asks UNAIDS and WHO. Their answer (which of course assumes that HIV is sexually
transmitted) is that African women are forced by circumstances to have sex with HIV positive men: “Women and girls are commonly discriminated against in terms of access to education, employment, credit, health care, land and inheritance. . . [R]elationships with men (casual or formalized through
marriage) can serve as vital opportunities for financial and social security, or for satisfying material aspirations. But, in areas where HIV/AIDS is widespread, they [men] are also more likely to have become infected with HIV. The combination of dependence and subordination can make it very difficult for girls and women to demand safer sex (even from their husbands) or to end relationships that carry the threat of infection.”
This explanation—that African women are infected by rapacious men—may be convincing to the radical feminist mind, but it completely begs the question. Why does HIV in Africa disproportionately strike women?
The answer lies in the medical transmission of HIV/AIDS. The public health sector in many African countries has simply collapsed. African clinics are short of almost everything, from vaccines and malaria tablets to rubber gloves and needles. Little, if any, care is available to African men and women ill with malaria and other tropical diseases. Medical equipment, such as syringes, surgical instruments, and manual vacuum aspirators, cannot be properly disinfected before they are reused. The local blood supply is unreliable.
The one exception to the generally dismal state of primary health care in Africa is Western-funded Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) programs targeting women. African medical workers are taught (and paid) to emphasize reproductive health procedures (contraception, sterilization, and abortion), often to the near exclusion of primary health care. Poorly equipped clinics are kept well-supplied with Depo-Provera, IUDs, and condoms. According to Dr. Stephen Karanja, the former Secretary of the Kenyan Medical Association, “Thousands of the Kenyan people will die of malaria whose treatment costs a few cents, in health facilities whose stores are stacked to the roof with millions of dollars worth of pills, IUDs, Norplant, Depo-Provera, most of which are supplied with American
money.”(3)
Is it mere coincidence that the same groups that are targeted for invasive procedures are disproportionately afflicted with AIDS? We think not. Women and girls account for such a high percentage of HIV/AIDS victims in Africa because they are infected during procedures designed to disable their reproductive systems and prevent them from conceiving or bearing children. Up to 70% of HIV infections in Africa, according to a recently published study in the peer-reviewed International Journal of STD and AIDS, occur as a result of substandard health care, primarily HIV transmission through reuse of needles.(4)
To paraphrase UNAIDS, it is the dependence and subordination of women to clinic personnel—often the only available source of health care for themselves and their families--that makes it very difficult to demand safe medical care, and to end medical relationships that carry the threat of infection.
Endnotes
(1) “AIDS Epidemic Update,” Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS)/World Health Organization (UNAIDS/WHO), December 2002, p. 6.
(2) “Ibid., p. 19.
(3) “Dr. Stephen Karanja: Health System Collapsed,” PRI Review (March/April 1997), 7(2): p. 4.
(4) David D. Brewer, Stuart Brody, Ernest Drucker, David Gisselquist, Stephen F. Minkin, John J. Potterat, Richard B. Rothernberg, and Francois Vachon, “Mounting Anomalies in the Epidemiology of HIV in Africa: Cry the Beloved Paradigm,” Int. J. of STD & AIDS 2003; 14:144-147. David Gisselquist, John J. Potterat, Stuart Brody, and Francois Vachon, “Let it be Sexual: how Health Care Transmission of AIDS in Africa was Ignored,” Int. J. of STD & AIDS 2003; 14:148-161. David Gisselquist and John J. Potterat, “Heterosexual Transmission of HIV in Africa: An Empiric Estimate,” Int. J. of STD & AIDS 2003; 14:162-173.
Steve Mosher is the president of Population Research Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to debunking the myth that the world is overpopulated.
(c) 2003 Population Research Institute.
Permission to reprint granted. Redistribute widely. Credit requested.
To subscribe to the Weekly Briefing, send an email to: Mail to: JOIN-PRI@Pluto.Sparklist.Com.
Nothing written here is to be construed as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before Congress.
The Population Research Institute is dedicated to ending human rights abuses committed in the name of "family planning," and to ending counter-productive social and economic paradigms premised on the myth of "overpopulation."
Is it mere coincidence that the same groups that are targeted for invasive procedures are disproportionately afflicted with AIDS? We think not. Women and girls account for such a high percentage of HIV/AIDS victims in Africa because they are infected during procedures designed to disable their reproductive systems and prevent them from conceiving or bearing children. Up to 70% of HIV infections in Africa, according to a recently published study in the peer-reviewed International Journal of STD and AIDS, occur as a result of substandard health care, primarily HIV transmission through reuse of needles.(4)
Up to 70% of HIV infections in Africa, according to a recently published study in the peer-reviewed International Journal of STD and AIDS, occur as a result of substandard health care, primarily HIV transmission through reuse of needles.(4)
If it's true, don't expect to hear about it on broadcast news or any newspaper near you.
So9
Actually, from what I can see, these results are supported by what we know about human sexual behavior, and about AIDS. If an HIV-infected man are able to impose themselves on multiple women, and if (as is known), male to female transmissions of HIV is much more efficient than female to male transmission of HIV, then you'd expect to see many more women than men have HIV infection in such a population. And that's what we see.
While non-sexual transmission of AIDS in Africa is very likely a serious problem, blaming it, and blaming the specific procedures of contraception as spreading them, is conjecture at best.
What the author conveniently forgets is that in any given encounter with an infected partner the women will always be at higher risk of infection than the man simply due to being the receptive partner.
HIV is most easily transmitted through minute breaks in the skin, exposing the blood supply to the virus. This is more likely to occur in womens vaginal mucosa than on the mans genitalia during sex.
And if what I've heard is true, that there is a preference in Africa for "dry" sex, this would make it even more likely to occur due to damage to the women's tissues.
So I wouldn't be surprised at all to see more women infected than men given the same amount of exposure.
LQ
Up to 70% of HIV infections in Africa, according to a recently published study in the peer-reviewed International Journal of STD and AIDS, occur as a result of substandard health care, primarily HIV transmission through reuse of needles.(4)
On the other hand, almost all African women are mutilated by "female circumcision", making vaginal intercourse painful. So ... they prefer anal intercourse.
I remember seeing a documentary some time ago that asserted that the chances of an infected male transmitting HIV to the recipient of anal intercourse (male or female) is about 1 in 3, while the chances of an uninfected male receiving it from an infected recipient of anal intercourse is like 1 in 30, and more like 1 in 300 if the male is circumcized. So this would be at least a contributory factor.
The statement in bold print, which is peer reviewed, does not necessarily follow from the statement that precedes it, which is conjecture and is not peer-reviewed. The odds that a woman has been HIV infected by an invasive contraceptive procedure has to be weighed against how many invasive non-contraceptive procedures women are subjected to (another potential source of AIDS) and how many sexual episodes they are subjected to unwillingly or otherwise by HIV-infected men (remembering that an HIV-infected man is more likely to give a non-infected woman AIDS than an HIV-infected woman is to give a non-infected man).
|
Press Release 20 February 2003 |
| Unsafe healthcare "drives spread of African HIV" |
|
Since the 1980s most experts have assumed that heterosexual sex transmitted 90% of HIV in Africa. In the March International Journal of STD and AIDS, an international team of HIV specialists presents groundbreaking evidence to challenge this consensus, with "profound implications" for public health in Africa. In a series of articles, Dr David Gisselquist, Mr John Potterat and colleagues argue that the spread of HIV infections in Africa is closely linked to medical care. In their unique study of existing data from across the continent they estimate that only about a third of HIV infections are sexually transmitted. Their evidence suggests that "health care exposures caused more HIV than sexual transmission", with contaminated medical injections being the biggest risk. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
They conclude: "a growing body of evidence points to unsafe injections and other medical exposures to contaminated blood" as an explanation for the majority of the spread of the epidemic. "This finding has major ramifications for current and future HIV control programmes in Africa" . |
|
ends - 20 February 2003 |
|
Read the articles (in PDF format): |
|
 Submit a comment about this story Return to the main Press Information page |
|
|
If you would like more information please contact: Rosamund Snow External Relations Manager The Royal Society of Medicine 1, Wimpole Street London W1G 0AE Tel: +44 (0) 20 7290 2904 Fax: +44 (0) 20 7290 2992 |
|
|
Home |
With all undue respect, MrBacon, I've actually done medical missionary work in Third World countries, and your "first hand knowledge" must be compared with the facts gathered by those who have been there and gathered the facts themselves.
Africa suffers from 1)female genital mutilation, as well as 2) a very high rate of culturally accepted prostitution and all the other things mentioned by posters in this thread, including 3)preference for "dry sex" (African men, in fact prefer it, because they think its more stimulating. Women actually use things like laundry detergent to remain "dry" for their mates), 4)highly promiscuous heterosexual sex, 5)preference for anal sex due to female genital mutilation.
This all lead, in the years before AIDS, to very high levels of STDs in general.
Thus the men who paid for prostitutes, their prostitutes themselves, their wives, the multiple sex partners, etc (all well documented, culturally accepted behaviors in much of Africa) all went to the local HEALTH CLINIC for a shot in the behind of cheap anti--biotics, which for many years (before antibiotic resisent strains of STDs emerged) cleared up the rampant STDs.
It is also well know that these clinics are chronically underfunded, and that they have reused needles for injections routinely for decades now.
It is also well know that these same clinics, which are chronically underfunded for routine health concerns, are overflowing with population control money, drugs, and devices.
According to Dr. Stephen Karanja, the former Secretary of the Kenyan Medical Association, “Thousands of the Kenyan people will die of malaria whose treatment costs a few cents, in health facilities whose stores are stacked to the roof with millions of dollars worth of pills, IUDs, Norplant, Depo-Provera, most of which are supplied with American money.”(3)
I can tell you from my own experience in medical missionary work in Haiti that this is absolutely and irrefutably true!
So the important point of the article is that, while millions are spent supplying these countries with contraceptive/abortifacient drugs, devices, and paraphernalia, very little is actually spent on health care.
So in effect, the superabundance of contraceptives/abortifacients (along with the well known fact that acceptance of contraceptives/abortifacients increases dangerous sexual behavior), combined with the scarcity of clean needles/sterilization equipment/procedures/medicines/antibiotics, has played a decisive role in causing this AIDS epidemic to explode among women.
There is certainly validity to the authors's point,
"Women and girls account for such a high percentage of HIV/AIDS victims in Africa because they are infected during procedures designed to disable their reproductive systems and prevent them from conceiving or bearing children."
...but the authors over reach in trying to infer that the majority of cases are due to this fact.
However, it is simply irrefutable that
"Up to 70% of HIV infections in Africa, according to a recently published study in the peer-reviewed International Journal of STD and AIDS, occur as a result of substandard health care, primarily HIV transmission through reuse of needles.(4)"
And it is also irrefutable that for every dollar spent on buying sterile needles, multiple dollars are spent on contraceptive/abortifacient drugs, devices, and paraphernalia that would be far better spent on basic health care measures.
This fact alone is the most important issue: Do we in the west engage in Contraceptive Imperialism as solution to Third World Poverty?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.