Women more vulnerable to HIV infection
The view of the poor and developing countries is that women and girls are more vulnerable to HIV infection in every sexual encounter, because the biological nature of the process and the vulnerability of the reproductive tract tissue with the virus, especially in adolescents.
For example, young women are generally disadvantaged by gender in relation to intake of food and access to health care. Growth patterns of girls are often worse than the boys. The inequalities become evident soon after birth, and a lot of girls are underweight. Social, cultural and economic forces make women more likely to contract HIV infection than men. Women are often less able to negotiate for safe sex, for reasons such as lower status, economic dependence and fear of violence.
Girls in poor families in developing countries often lack the ability to make real choices about their sexual and reproductive life, how, when and who to marry, whether and when to have children and how many of you have and whether contraceptives. Women tend to marry very young, almost two thirds of young people, in most South Asian countries marry before 18 years, and many even before 15 years, in spite of laws like the prohibition of marriage.
The “Rainbow Nari O Shishu Kallyan Foundation” four major approaches in an innovative study on the prevalence of HIV in Bangladesh. This study investigated by comparing the social and economic standard, the family of models of economic dependence, as the sex industry, assembly, discrimination based on sex and the global analysis fact. There are four factors that play a key role in the transmission of HIV in Bangladesh: Injection / drug injectors (By sharing needle), female sex work (due to lack of safe sex knowledge), gender discrimination ( which indirectly force of women or gender non-commercial) of the same sex / homosexually / Hizra (due to lack of HIV / AIDS information, because they are invisible in this society). Poverty and illiteracy heated proportion.
In many poor regions of women limited economic opportunities and the relative powerlessness forces in sex work to survive, from household financial disasters. This implies that are infected with HIV, and that in turn on HIV to their clients. In these areas, women are particularly vulnerable to HIV infection because of differences in sex, violence, and limited access to information. Moreover, discrimination and stigma hinder girls’ access to health services. Poverty leads to increased migration to find work.
The analysis of gender in relation to HIV / AIDS, usually by women of childbearing age, and only rarely for girls, young women and girls are increasingly targeted for sex with older men, security and even those who mistakenly believe that people living with HIV / AIDS is a disease through sexual intercourse with a virgin. Thus HIV / AIDS epidemic was gender inequality and discrimination. Unequal power relations, coercion and sexual violence are broadly in line with those of women of all ages, and have a range of adverse effects on female sexual, physical and mental health.
In many developing countries, poverty and discrimination of women and men are strongly associated with the spread of HIV / AIDS. Sex and age show the way in which women and girls of different age groups are particularly vulnerable to infection, and requires support for the survivors on the financial and social impact of the epidemic. The approach for the control of HIV / AIDS and the fight against poverty are interlinked. Therefore, health and development workers should be based on an integrated set of policies and programs to reduce poverty and combat HIV / AIDS. They must be based on the need for special efforts to protect women and girls at risk of HIV / AIDS and ensure that laws, civil and human rights of those affected and infected persons are adequately protected and that women have access to care, counseling and assistance to equal footing with men.
References: Rainbow Nari O Shishu Kallyan Foundation, UNAIDS, ARDS
