Countering the feminization of AIDS with microbicides.

Although HIV infections among men who have sex with men dominated the headlines in the epidemics infancy as early as 1983 an AIDS epidemic within the heterosexual population was emerging in Africa. While this prompted the Centers for Disease Control to add the female sexual partners of infected men to its list of risk groups in the United States a more precise understanding of womens risk has been slow to come. Not until 1996 did UNAIDS have what it considered a reliable tally of global HIV/AIDS incidence and prevalence among women - in that year finding that women accounted for 42 percent of new HIV infections worldwide. By the end of 2002 that percentage had risen to 50 percent. In sub-Saharan Africa women account for 58 percent of adults living with HIV/AIDS and females between the ages of 15 and 29 are two-and-a-half times more likely than men in their same age group to be infected. The feminization of HIV/AIDS is not confined to sub-Saharan Africa: unless action is taken women worldwide - particularly those in countries on the brink of epidemic explosions like India and China - will be disproportionately infected and affected by HIV/AIDS. (excerpt)