Women and HIV/AIDS

Women and HIV/AIDS

Introduction

The HIV / AIDS as a problem of health, is gaining every year thousands of human lives worldwide. The AIDS in women is directly related to the role that society has assigned to it, which is why prevention of AIDS in the population female only possible, when the woman has the ability to say “No” to a relationship unprotected sex. Despite the progress made in the last thirty years in the fight against this pandemic, today it is estimated to be over 33 million people living with HIV / AIDS in the world, half of them women (www.kff.org).

In our country, although AIDS is no longer news, and the numbers and living conditions of people with HIV / AIDS are not comparable with those of many other places, it is estimated that there are between 120,000 and 150,000 people who are infected , and more than a quarter of infected people who are still unaware. Of all these people, approximately 30% are women (www.aidsunited.org).

Summary of Literature

It is true that behind this “feminization” of the biological factors underlying disease (women are more vulnerable than men to HIV / AIDS, the effects of the disease progress more rapidly in women) but the biggest factor of vulnerability is in unequal treatment and opportunities for women and men: the lack of freedom for women, the violence perpetrated against them and the inability to have to “negotiate” sexual relations on equal terms, is placing women in the center of the target of HIV / AIDS, especially in the poorest countries with large inequalities between genders (www.law-lib.utoronto.ca).

This inequality affects both the risk of infection and the prevention and access to health services, extends to the different impact that the disease occurs in men and women and also covers the tasks of caring for sick people, mostly in hands of women.

Every day more women acquiring HIV, due not only to fortuitous relations and unprotected, but also as a result of stable, which means they can be infected by their husbands and boyfriends. It is then the question: What makes women more vulnerable to this infection? Women are biologically, socio-culturally and economically more vulnerable to HIV (www.aidsunited.org).

From the biological standpoint, the research has been conducted by several authors and agencies which show that the chance of getting infected through unprotected intercourse is 2-4 times more for women as compared to men. Compared with men for a relationship sex, women have an increased mucosal surface exposed to their partner's sexual secretions. In addition, infected semen normally contains a higher concentration of virus than vaginal fluids of women and remains longer in the vagina and rectal tract, vaginal secretions on penis (www.aidsunited.org). This streamlines the transmission from men to women than the reverse. It ensures that adolescents and adult women have postmenopausal biohazard higher since the vaginal mucosa is more permeable to the virus. The physiologically immature cervix and scant vaginal secretions less oppose an obstacle to HIV. The tearing and bleeding during intercourse, multiply the risks ...