Poverty, AIDS and Gender
This chapter examines the disadvantaged position of men in respect to treatment, even in contexts such as South Africa the drugs used in anti-retroviral therapy (ART) can be purchased at less than market price. Yet in this discussion, we also learn that although, in the heartland of the epidemic in SSA, HIV/AIDS has historically been associated with populations who are ‘affluent, educated and mobile’, poverty and inequality have begun to transfer new infections to poor young women, often as a result of the socio-economic inequalities associated with ‘transactional sex’. Thus while women are more likely to be diagnosed early and to receive treatment – partly because of their greater engagement with healthcare services through pregnancy and children – the majority (60 percent) of new HIV cases in region are female.