A major factor in the rapid spread of AIDS throughout Africa is because
many Africans have more than one long-term sexual partner at a time. Many
tribes in Africa are traditionally polygamous, with men at liberty to
marry as many women that they can support financially. If the men had
sex only with the women they are married to, and the women did likewise,
HIV would have no "travel permits." Yet many men have mistresses,
who may have additional partners themselves, allowing one ring of
sexual partners to be connected to another ring, forming network after
network joined in long-term concurrent relations. Thus allowing the rapid
spread of HIV.
The routine of formal and informal polygamy produces a web of simultaneous
sexual partners, linking person to person—along with their partners—in
network after network, generating a web of rapid transmission. If one
member of this giant web gets HIV, all other members become vulnerable
too. This is the major reason why Africa has so quickly been decimated
by HIV/AIDS.
Long-term concurrent sexual relationships are more common in Africa
than in Asia and the West, where heterosexual persons usually maintain
serial monogamy. The reports by Helen
Epstein regarding the success of Uganda's Zero Grazing campaign
to lower infection rates in Uganda conclude it is unfortunate
that this program was phased out and is not being reinstated.
In the 1980s, Ugandan health officials had not heard of "long-term concurrent
sexual relationships" but they knew HIV was spreading rapidly. The health
officials also felt it was unrealistic to advise men to forsake their
extra wives and mistresses, so they enacted the Zero Grazing policy to
reduce the spread of HIV.
For an educational discussion on sexual concurrency blogs, see Concurrency
and a Campaign for Serial Faithfulness and Sex,
AIDS & Exports in Africa.
^TOP HIV RATES INCREASE >
Christopher Hudson, "AIDS
in Rural Africa: A Paradigm for HIV-1 Prevention," International
Journal of STD & AIDS, Vol. 7, No. 4 (1996), pp. 236–243;
Martina Morris and Mirjam Kretzschmar, "Concurrent Partnerships
and the Spread of HIV," AIDS, Vol. 11, No. 5 (1997), pp.
681–683; and Daniel T. Halperin and Helen Epstein, "Concurrent
Sexual Partnerships Help to Explain Africa's High HIV Prevalence: Implications
for Prevention,"The Lancet, July 3, 2004, pp. 4–6.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17963
Polygamy is also common in the
Middle East, where HIV infection rates are extremely low. Middle-Eastern
cultures may be protected by the widespread practice of male
circumcision, which may reduce the risk of HIV transmission by
70 percent, and by the intense surveillance of women's behavior. Though
many men may have multiple concurrent partners, few women do. See "Why Is AIDS Worse in Africa?" Discover, February 2004,
and John Donnelly, "Circumcised Men Less Likely to Get AIDS," The Boston Globe,
November 16, 2004.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17963
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