Article Written by: EKANYA Monivick (an AGYW)
Introduction
In 2022, UNAIDS revealed that 39 million persons were living with HIV and 53% of this people were adolescent girls and young women, especially those between the ages of 15 to 24.HIV (Human Immune Deficiency Virus) attacks the body’s immune system and if it is not treated, it will result to AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) which is a deadly disease and currently has no effective cure. Throughout this article we are going to be evaluating the factors that expose adolescent girls and young women to HIV.
Let’s picture a little girl, joy, who is 16years of age and leaves in an underdeveloped country, who has just undergone female genital mutilation and breast ironing and is now being forced into an early marriage with a 63 years old man with 7 wives and 15 children, who happens to be her father’s debtor and to settle his debts, he sacrifices the future of his daughter. Joy knows nothing about marriage or about nursing a child. 3months after marriage, she becomes pregnant and due to persistent fever, headache, nausea, skin rash, general pains and aches she convinces her husband to give her money for antenatal , she goes to the hospital and discovers she is HIV positive, but due to poverty and lack of information, education and resources, she continues living her life like a normal person endangering the life of her unborn baby ignorantly. During delivery she bleed to death but her baby survived. I will allow you to imagine what became of her baby after her death.
Risk Factors
1.Female genital mutilation
It is a harmful traditional practice that involves the cutting of the female genitalia or clitoris (which exempts her from sexual pleasure) for non – medical reasons, and it is thus considered internationally to be an illegal act. This harmful practice has no health benefits for girls and women but rather causes severe bleeding and urinating problems, infections; such as HIV infections which may result from the use of unsterilized equiptments such as blades, syringes, which might have been used on infected persons. This practice may also result to complications in child birth and unsatisfactory as well as painful sexual intercourse and hence female genital mutilation is internationally recognized as a violation of the human rights of girls and young women.
2.Early / forced marriages
It is the union or marriage between two people in which one or both parties are younger than 18years of age. Girls are the most prone to early marriages as compared to men, this is due to poverty, that results in father’s using their daughters to settle their debts by giving them out for marriage with older men, exposing the young girls to different health risk like HIV, which may result from the fact that their husbands may have numerous partners and may have contracted this infection from one of their partners and will in turn infect the adolescent girl, causing a reduction in her lifespan since due to poverty, she cannot afford the treatment for HIV and it’s resulting disease.
3.Rape
This occurs when someone is forced to have sex violently either anally, virginally or orally l with the use of body parts or objects against her will with the use of threats or application of physical force. Rape occurs in home, communities, schools, job sites, etc. to people of all ages, educational levels and religions. Rape is also one of the many practices that exposes adolescent girls to infections like HIV, imagine an adolescent girl being raped by a HIV positive man and thus contracting the infection, this assault and it’s outcome leave the victim emotionally scarred all their lives.
4.Poverty
Poverty goes a long way to contribute to the increase in number of HIV cases for adolescent girls and young women. You find an adolescent girl in the university who hails from a poor background, and instead of focusing on her studies to make her parents proud, she starts moving from man to man in search of money. The aspect of having multiple partners increases her risk of getting infected because one or some of these partners might be HIV positive patients and instead of taking success back home she takes HIV and embarrassment.
5.Illiteracy/lack of information
An adolescent girl might want to get intimate with her boyfriend and might not consider that this boyfriend of hers’ might be HIV positive so she has to use protection (condom) to prevent herself from contracting the infection or pregnant. The outcome of this ignorance leaves her emotionally, mentally, and physically unstable throughout her life because she has to deal with consequences she didn’t bargain for knowingly.
Eknaya Monivick
