Women Susceptibility to HIV infection

Posted by admin on July 1, 2008

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With special reference to developing countries where HIV/AIDS is rampant, women susceptibility to this scourge in normally high. This has much to do with the lifestyle governed by rigid cultural rules that women of this side of the world are expected to comply with.

These cultural roots that expose women to more danger of catching the venereal diseases such as AIDS are mostly tied to the marriages and relationships to cultural practices. In some of these countries, some tribes perform female genital mutilation through traditional practitioners.

Young girls in some of these places know and feel that not escaping the ‘knife’ makes them responsible adults who can be responsible for a husband.

This is basically where the exposure to AIDS started some years back and even now to some unfortunate young girls whose schooling dreams are also chattered at once.

Needless to say, the tools used to perform some of these rituals on their private parts make them vulnerable to HIV infection if shared and not sterilized. The thing is, even these traditional performers, know nothing about this ailment and how it is transmitted.

After this, these girls only flourishing into young beautiful women are forced in to early marriages with old tired men who still have some proliferation potential proving their manhood. This old man could have acquired this HIV virus from one of his multiple wives who could have cheated, out of boredom in terms of sexual satisfaction.

So this young lovely queen whose father received a couple of goats and cattle as the dowry becomes the next undeserving victim for this virus. In any case this husband will spend the best part of his old disgusting age with this fresh bride to give her a couple of kids before he ‘buys’ yet another!

As I mentioned earlier, these young girls drop out of primary education to get married off to old men, which means that, they are only too young and ignorant to know that such relationships only expose them to early sexual behaviors and venereal diseases.

When they get pregnant for the first time, they might have difficult labor because of the female genital mutilation process not to mention the transmission of the virus to the baby and the midwives.

In some cultures too, this girl should be married off to the brother in law in case her own husband died of AIDS. She then spreads the virus to him, and to his other wives.

This girl is also the one expected to feed her children while the husband sit down and rest, waiting for the next woman who want to get pregnant. She will do the grazing, farming fetching water and firewood among others. This again makes her vulnerable to rape by any immoral man on the forest or wherever.

These days, not even the little girls are spared by rapists; cases of abuse are rampant nowadays. If this young woman finds herself in the grip of these cruel rapists and she is also carrying her little girl on her back, the better for these assaulters. Both of these females stand a high chance of being infected with HIV virus.

This is not only on the rural and remotest of world parts, but also in the city where women dress to elicit passion. With little or no economic strength at all, these women can not stand for their medical care because antiretroviral drugs are way too expensive and that they also must take care of their families.