| S04 | Determinants of
HIV/AIDS - Facteurs déterminants du SIDA |
| Organiser: | Caraël Michel (Committee on AIDS) 10 Château des Bains, 01630 Sergy, France Tel: +41 22 7912111 /7914611 Fax: +41 22 7914187 /7914165 Email: caraelm@unaids.org |
| Outline: | Among the estimated 33.4 million
people alive with HIV/AIDS in 1999, more than a third are young people aged 15-24. In the
most affected countries, such as Southern and Eastern Africa, more than 50% of new HIV
infections occur before the age of 25, and 15 to 20% of girls aged 15-19 are already
infected by HIV as compared to 3-7% of boys of similar ages, meaning a sexual mixing
pattern whereby young girls have sex with much older men. In such situations, the front
line of research and prevention programmes should shift from general population or
vulnerable groups to those entering into sexual activity for the first time. The timing and conditions of sexual initiation and first sexual relations of young people in the developing world has always been the focus of particular attention, given the key role of sex in biological and sexual reproduction. But now, under the threat of HIV/STD, new critical issues are emerging such as gender ideologies that place the language and control over sex out of women’s control and condone physical violence and sexual coercion, changes in cultural attitudes and wider opportunities of choice, particularly for young women, modifying the transition to an adult sexuality that was in the past much more closely linked to marriage. AIDS representation, health beliefs, condom perception and use in different partnerships, contraceptive behaviour, STD health seeking behaviour are also topics of interest. Some of the following questions will be addressed in this session: What are the sexual mixing patterns of young people before or during marriage in different cultures? What are the main hypotheses to explain current patterns of youth sexual behaviour: e.g. breakdown of traditional social control over male/female sexuality due to school education or other social changes? Individual strategies to cope with economic constraints or steps toward marriage? Weakening association between delayed and declining marriages, and sexual initiation for young women? What are the determinants of various health beliefs? How effective are quantitative survey design and methods to assess first sexual relations and their determinants? |