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 Young African brides are at greater risk for contracting HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, than sexually active unmarried girls in the same age group, according to a recent report from UNICEF and other United Nations agencies.
Experts offered several possible reasons for the surprising aberration from usual patterns. For example, Dr. Christine Hankins, chief scientific advisor for the United Nations AIDS program (UNAIDS), reported that African women who marry before the age of 20 tend to marry much older men, opening them up to greater risk of contracting the virus from their more sexually experienced husbands. Women who marry later tend to wed men closer to their own age.
In addition, traditional culture within many African countries prevents married women from refusing sex or insist that their husbands wear condoms, even if they know their husbands have been unfaithful. Finally, the biological framework of young women’s bodies makes them physiologically more susceptible to the virus than their older counterparts.
World Vision has been providing AIDS education and care for more than five years through its multi-million dollar Hope Initiative.
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