Report on the Global HIV/AIDS epidemic

Report on the global HIV/AIDS epidemic - June 2000

S already infected by her 15th birthday. Obviously, the girls were becoming infected
during their earliest sexual exposures.

Figure 18.

HIV prevalence rate among teenagers in Kisumu,
Kenya, by age

35
30
25
0 20
15 -10
5

29.4

O boys
0girls,,
/

I ~ 03U O5 E
15 16 17 18
age in years
Source: National AIDS Programme, Kenya, and Population Council, 1999

I;:

>

The other crucial factor pushing up HIV rates in young women is age-mixing. If the
girls' sole sex partners were boys their own age, they would run little risk of becoming infected; as Figure 18 shows, there are few if any HIV infections among boys
before the late teens. However, girls also have sex with older men - men who have
been sexually active for many years and who therefore tend to be more heavily
infected than younger males.
In rural areas of the United Republic of Tanzania, some 17% of unmarried teenagers
reported having had sex with a man at least 10 years older than themselves. In a
nationwide study in Zambia, over a quarter of the men who had extramarital encounters had casual sex with women 10 years or more their junior. Men who have sex
with younger women may also have other high-risk partners. Among men identified
as clients of sex workers in a study in four African cities, for example, around onethird had also had casual sex with teenage girls.
While there are many cultural and economic reasons for this kind of cross-generational sex, the fear of HIV seems to be prompting some men to seek out partners
they believe are less likely to be infected - young girls. There is a double deadly irony
here. Men who are fearful of acquiring HIV may be infected themselves without

// 48

48