Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2005. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - December 4, 2005
Claire Keeton
South Africa's second household study on HIV by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) also found that 60% of those surveyed are not using condoms - yet two-thirds of them did not believe that this would lead to infection.
Most vulnerable to HIV are women aged 15 to 24 years old.
For the first time the survey was able to measure recent infections.
Alarmingly, it found that eight times more women than men were HIV-positive in the 15-24 age group.
Women in that age group who had sexual partners more than five years older were four times more likely to be HIV-positive than those who had partners within five years of their age .
Yet many young women are pairing up with older men. Nearly nine times more women than men aged 15 to 24 years old have older partners.
"Women aged 15 to 24 years old have a four times higher HIV prevalence (this includes recent and old infections) than men," said Dr Olive Shisana, the HSRC chief executive officer.
Her co-principal investigator, Professor Thomas Rehle, said the counting of recent infections - which found 87% of them were women of child-bearing age - was important to understanding how HIV was being spread.
Professor Salim Abdool Karim, director of the Centre for the Aids Programme of Research in South Africa, said: "The bigger the age difference the more the epidemic is able to grow.
"If men and women in the same age group were having sex, it would be burning out. But older men having sex with younger women means they have an ever- replenishing group to drive the epidemic."
He added that younger women were biologically more susceptible to HIV and had less bargaining power to use condoms when their partners were older men.
Only by the 35 to 39 years old age group, do male rates of HIV infection exceed the female rates.
But even at its peak the male HIV rate, of 23% in this age group, is 10% lower than the peak female rate of 33%.
This female rate of 33% HIV infection among women aged 25 to 29 years old is similar to the 2004 antenatal survey.
More than 23000 people took part in this study and 15851 were tested for HIV.
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