(Bloomberg) -- African women, already among the most vulnerable in acquiring HIV, are increasingly at risk as droughts intensify across the continent, according to researchers at the University of Bristol.
That's as poverty stricken female subsistence farmers in countries with some of the highest incidence of virus that causes the auto-immune disease AIDS, tend to seek money from other activities such as transactional sex, according to the study published Tuesday in AIDS and Behavior
“That we found this among women in rural areas, but not women in urban areas or men in either rural or urban areas corroborates previous studies,” that pointed to the link between hunger and higher transactional sex rates, said lead author Adam Trickey.
With about 65% of Africa's population relying on subsistence farming, the “effect of droughts could still result in many people acquiring HIV in this situation,” Trickey said.
Data from more than 100,000 adults aged 15-59 in five sub-Saharan African countries was used, which was linked to precipitation levels to calculate whether people who had been exposed to a drought were more likely to have recently acquired HIV than those who were not exposed. The paper, funded by the Wellcome Trust, said further research is needed to consider the pathways that link drought and HIV.
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