Adolescent girls, young women face higher risk of HIV despite drop in infection
Overlapping challenges of HIV, unintended pregnancies, and SGBV among adolescent girls and young people present sexual risk and vulnerabilities.
What you need to know:
- Young women and girls are disproportionately vulnerable to HIV infection in sub-Saharan Africa.
- Every week, 4,000 young women and girls get infected globally, 3,100 of whom are in sub-Saharan Africa.
As a young girl at primary school in Nyanza, Alice* was forced into a sexual relationship with a secondary school teacher. Throughout the pregnancy that followed, he offered her no financial or emotional support. The teacher instead suggested that she abort, a practice that would have put Alice’s life in danger and violated the law.
Shortly after giving birth, she noticed that she was experiencing headaches and fevers frequently. Alarmed, she sought medical advice and received devastating news that she was HIV positive. She was told that breastfeeding would put her daughter at risk of contracting the virus from her. This news hit Alice hard. She despaired and was overwhelmed by the enormity of the challenges she and her daughter faced, prompting her to contemplate suicide.
Young women and girls like Alice are disproportionately vulnerable to HIV infection in sub-Saharan Africa. However, the latest data by UNAIDS show a drop in the rate of new HIV cases by 63 per cent among adolescent girls and young women between 2010 to 2023. Women and girls remain most vulnerable to HIV.
In sub-Saharan Africa, adolescent girls and young women aged 15–24 are three times more likely to be infected than men and boys in the same age bracket. According to Unicef, adolescent girls are six times more likely to get HIV than boys in eastern and southern Africa, where rates of early pregnancies and gender-based violence (GBV) are some of the world’s highest.
UNAIDS says that every week, 4,000 young women and girls get HIV infection globally, 3,100 of whom are in sub-Saharan Africa. To reserve this, UNAIDS is proposing more funding to support women and girls to prevent new cases and stop GBV, which heightens women’s and girls’ risk of infection. The UN agency wants governments to ensure access to treatment, if prevention fails.
UNAIDS has called for renewed effort in support of gender equality to facilitate increased and accelerated access to HIV services for women and girls. Great progress has been made in preventing infection in the past two decades. “There is a deep injustice faced by women and girls – their vulnerability to HIV. But when we work with countries to support girls and enable them to complete secondary school, we keep them safer from HIV, from teenage pregnancy, from violence and child marriage,” UNAIDS executive director Winnie Byanyima said.
Winnie said HIV programmes for women and girls need to be fully funded and expanded and they must access prevention and treatment tools that meet their specific needs. “This includes new prevention tools such as the new long-acting injectable HIV prevention technologies. HIV is a feminist issue, and we cannot wait any longer for gender equality,” she said.
Kenya experiences significant challenges with HIV infection and teenage pregnancies, which have severe consequences on health and opportunities. One in six adolescent girls aged 15–19 has been pregnant or is already a mother, resulting in over 260,000 pregnancies annually. In 2022, some 7,307 new HIV cases were reported among adolescents and young people aged 15–24, accounting for 41 per cent of all new cases in the country.
According to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022, slightly more than half of young people (54 per cent of women and 55 per cent of men) know about HIV prevention.
Last year, the government unveiled a comprehensive commitment plan aimed at eradicating the triple threat of HIV infection, GBV and teenage pregnancy by the year 2027. Former Health Cabinet Secretary Susan Nakhumicha launched the initiative in Bungoma during the Western Kenya Women Summit. She said the government would leverage a host of policy and legislative tools to end new HIV cases, adolescent pregnancies, and GBV.
“The journey to eliminate the triple public health crisis of HIV/Aids, teenage pregnancies, and gender-based violence has started. This is in line with our commitment to national and international conventions,” she said.
*Name changed to protect the girl’s identity.