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Wealth, Wealth Indices and HIV Risk in East Africa
Authors: Jeffrey B. Bingenheimer
Source: International Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health (formerly: International Family Planning Perspectives), Volume 33, Number 2, June 2007
Topic(s): HIV/AIDS
Poverty
Wealth Index
Country: Africa
  Multiple African Countries
Published: JUN 2007
Abstract: For nearly two decades, the conviction that poverty fuels the spread of HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa has been ubiquitous among epidemiologists and development workers.1–3 In 2005, however, a team of epidemiologists4 published a comment in The Lancet drawing attention to some surprising findings: Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data from Kenya and Tanzania appear to demonstrate that HIV prevalence is highest among the wealthiest segments of those populations, and lowest among the poor.5,6 In light of these findings, the authors suggested that wealth, rather than poverty, may be the root cause of behavioral risk for HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Web: http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/3308307.html