CONTRIBUTORY FACTORS TO THE SPREAD OF HIV/AIDS AND IT IMPACTS IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICAN COUNTRIES

Abstract

This paper attributes the fast spread of HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan African countries to the prevailing dominance-subservience relationships in the region. The unequal relationship exists in gender, economic and international relations. The three forms of inequality work synergistically to make Sub-Sahara Africa the most afflicted and threatened region by HIV/AIDS. Currently, young females group is most afflicted by HIV/AIDS. Differential gender power relations and cultural mores that allow males to have many sex partners precipitate this. Older males often prefer and procure younger female as sex partners. The females yield because of the large material rewards they receive from the men. Due to the economic recession in the region, some young females take to the provision of commercial sex services to meet their material requirements. There is also the international traffic in young female which male facilitate at source in Sub-Saharan Africa and at the point of delivery in the developed countries. It is instructive that females have little power for negotiating safe sex with even their husbands and virtually none to insist on precaution in commercial sex-relations. This fast propagation of the virus in Africa is attributed to its finding a more congenial social, political and economic environment for survival. The congenial environment has been created by, among other vices, economic disorganization, poverty and the sexually permissive youth sub-culture that has emerged from the culture of poverty. The spread of HIV/AIDS has significant impacts on the health sector, education sector, economy, life expectancy, food production and on the children of HIV/AIDS victims. It is therefore concluded that HIV/AIDS, like other infectious diseases (e.g. tuberculosis, cholera, etc), thrive most in poor social economic reforms that make female, in particular, have adequate material resources and for habitually promiscuous males and females to beware and take necessary precautions against the spread of HIV/AIDS.