Aids In Africa

8 Pages 2054 Words

and although no country has entirely escaped the virus, prevalence rates vary dramatically between regions, countries, and even within countries. In general, the southern region is the most affected, with Botswana, Namibia, Swaziland and Zimbabwe showing the highest rates, while West Africa has been less affected. In almost all countries, the HIV/AIDS prevalence rate is significantly higher in urban areas than in rural areas. Within the general population, the highest prevalence rates are found among the sexually active adult (15 to 49 years old) population. Women tend to get infected at earlier ages than males for a variety of biological and sociocultural reasons. In recent years an intensive government-sponsored HIV prevention campaign focusing on use of condoms and changes in sexual behavior has produced impressive results. Researchers however, have yet to satisfactorily explain the broad variation in HIV seroprevalence between Western and Eastern sub-Saharan Africa. As Gilks (1999) observes, “in some of the countries of Western Africa such as Senegal, low levels of HIV prevalence in adults have been maintained for about a decade, despite many circumstances highly conducive to appreciable and sustained transmission” (p. 181). In some Western African nations, early and sustained prevention programs may be responsible for the differences, although other reports indicate that comparatively low transmission rates prevail in most of the Western countries regardless of programs designed to encourage safer sex (UNAIDS, 1998, p. 2). Reports also show that differences in the rate of HIV spread between East and West Africa cannot be explained by differences in sexual behavior alone. AIDS researchers typically make a distinction between concentrated and generalized transmission patterns of the virus. In a concentrated transmission pattern, infection tends to be concentrated within “vulnerable groups” such as homosexual men, prostitutes...