Die Quietly: How AIDS kills Africa's battered women

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L13622789.htm

NAIROBI, Aug 17 (Reuters) - You can learn about condoms, know that fidelity or abstinence can protect you from AIDS, but if your husband is HIV-positive, violent and wants sex, there is not a whole lot you can do.

HIV/AIDS is ravaging sub-Saharan Africa. It is one of only two regions -- the other being North Africa and the Middle East -- where more women are infected than men.

The United Nations estimates that 29.4 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are HIV-positive. About 58 percent are women and girls.

It is not that African women sleep around. Subjugated in marriages where many have no economic or legal independence, infection is often unavoidable: if you have nowhere to go, having sex with your infected spouse is not a matter of choice.

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[KCDem]

1. if your husband is HIV-positive, violent and wants sex, there is not a who

Sorry, that isn't confined to Africa.

[Clete]

2. So are any of the writers on this site

ever going to write a book about the plight of women around the world. Culture and tradition are keeping millions of women in a state of hopeless slavery in everything but name.

[Nay]

3. I'm sure they'd like to, Clete, but it would be such a depressing book

that no one would buy it. Or publish it. And besides, it would just be about WOMEN, and unless they're good-looking and between the sheets, no one cares about them much. Look at how Arnold treats them in our modern democracy, and then think how they must be treated in Africa. They are worth less than a milk cow.