Poster Session on HIV/AIDS and STDs (2)

The SSA HIV epidemic presents patterns that challenge conventional understandings of the relationships between SES and health. It has often been assumed that Africa’s status as the continent with the highest HIV infection rates is linked to endemic high poverty and a corresponding lack of access to adequate health care resources. Somewhat surprisingly, a growing number of studies show that wealthier individuals (irrespective of gender), wealthier regions (urban areas), and wealthier countries within SSA often display the highest levels of HIV infection.Despite evidence of a positive SES-HIV gradient, researchers and policy-makers frequently assume that range of protective interventions – increasing awareness of mechanisms of HIV transmission, techniques for prevention, greater access to health care facilities, and greater availability of condoms – will reduce the likelihood of contracting HIV, even among higher SES populations. We explore the relationships between SES and a range of intervening risk factors to illuminate the complex causal processes that link SES and HIV in Cameroon.Results show at least through 2004 any benefit that may have accrued from high SES appears to be offset by higher riskier sexual practices – including more premarital sexual activity, higher numbers of sexual partners, and higher rates of infidelity

The spread of STIs/HIV and the infection cases are significantly increasing in China. Migrant males are big concern in this topic. Since the existence of elder male bachelors with migrant experience due to sex imbalance in China, the situation of STIs/HIV transmission becomes more complicated. This research focuses on risks of STIs/HIV transmission among migrant males in the context of sex imbalance in China. The data comes from the survey of sexuality and reproductive health conducted in a western central city, where represents most social characteristic of sex imbalance. The theory of risky perception is used as the theoretical framework. With the analysis strategy of description and regression by comparison between elder male bachelors and other migrant, this research targets to reveal the correlation between risky perception of STIs/HIV infection and risky sexual behaviors. The self-protective motivation relates to STIs/HIV transmission are also discussed to analyze the migrant males’ risks. With the emergence of elder male bachelors, the results are helpful to make policy applications to improve the prevention and education of STIs/HIV transmission in the situation of sex imbalance in China.

The objectives of this study are to identify the situation of children infected and affected by HIV/AIDS, the children’s primary caregivers, and the needs and the priority of the needs of the children. This study utilized a combination of three methods to collect data such as synthesizing information from available secondary documents, quantitative study and qualitative study.
More than a half of primary caregivers for children infected and affected by HIV are over 60 year-old, bad health, and low income. 94% of households said that their income is not sufficient to spend. 44.4% of households have unstable income. About 24% of children infected and affected by HIV are living in the houses with poor condition. The situation of physical and psychological health of the HIV-infected children is very bad. The biggest difficulty for children affected by HIV/AIDS is access to education because of lack of money to pay tuition fees, and discrimination. The children suffer from the discrimination in both their communities and their families. The first needs of the whole children is educational support, the second is medical examination and treatment support and the third is the support related to nutrition.
Key words: HIV-infected children, children affected by HIV, support needs, primary caregivers, maternal or paternal grandparen

With the increasing pervasiveness of social media, the Internet has become an important venue for dating and sex. Not only does it introduce a unique array of opportunities and risks for men who have sex with men (MSM), it presents a valuable means through which to study sexual behavior. In this study, we collected data on what men report in their online profiles on two dating/hookup websites to explore possible geographical differences in social and cultural norms surrounding sex and HIV (N=5,588). Across the fifteen selected cities, significant differences emerged in reported HIV serostatus and stated preference for safer sex (condom use). These patterns suggest important contextual and demographic variations and point to a need for targeted, population-specific interventions. With a better understanding of the local factors driving risky sexual behavior, health communication messages and tailored online interventions could be developed to address the needs and concerns of specific groups.

Research on HIV among men who have sex with men has focused on individual behavioral and biomedical factors driving transmission risks, but these cannot be fully understood without also understanding the social context within which sexual minorities live. Using data from 703 gay and bisexual men in Atlanta, this study explores the factors associated with homosexual identity formation and disclosure (“outness”) and examines how these constructs are associated with sexual risk taking. In multivariable regression models, sexual identity and outness were associated with age, race, education, employment, and experience of discrimination. Independent of these factors, having a more established and open homosexual identity was associated with lower sexual risk behaviors. These results highlight the need to address discriminatory policies and values in society and call for programs to provide support and promote healthy identity development among vulnerable groups.

Aims: Past studies on age at first sexual intercourse among South African youth have been largely cross-sectional and lack theoretical basis. This paper investigates factors influencing first sexual intercourse among South African youth using Waves 1-3 of Cape Area Panel Study data, based on Social Cognitive Theory. Methods: This quantitative data was analysed using Stata 12, and employs descriptive statistics, correlation and Cox Proportional Hazard Regression models. Results: The results showed that age, sex, racial origin, having attained secondary or tertiary educational level, and not attending school wielded a delaying effect on the rate of transition to first sexual intercourse at the three waves. On the other hand, not being happy about life, being from single-parent or both-parents family structures exerted a positive effect on the rate of transition into first sexual intercourse in Wave 1. Low level of happiness significantly encouraged the respondents to initiate their first sexual intercourse during the second wave. At the third wave, having low educational aspiration associated significantly with higher age at first sexual intercourse in 2005. Conclusions: This study concluded that personal and socio-economic/demographic factors were mostly important as far as the timing of first sexual intercourse is concerned.

This study focuses on the relationship between violent conflict and the timing of young women’s first sexual intercourse before marriage in Rwanda during 1990-2000. Rwanda was one of the African countries most affected by AIDS and also experienced civil war leading up to genocide in 1994. It is believed that violent conflict can affect the epidemiology of HIV/AIDS. The epidemiology of HIV may be exacerbated or inhibited, as conflict shatters individual lives and communities, depending on the characteristics of the conflict and the regional ecology of HIV. The study makes use of unique data on violent conflict at regional level in Rwanda that are linked to the sexual histories of individual women. I find that there is an increased risk of first sexual intercourse during years of conflict. This could possibly operate through contextual effects on sexual behavior, which could be voluntary sexual experience or forced sexual experience. Lack of parental and community control and rape being used as weapon of war are major theoretical pathways through which conflict could produce increased risk of experiencing first sex and increase the exposure opportunity and risk for STIs and HIV.

Understanding of the burden of HIV in populations who are most at risk is poor, largely because these populations are poorly represented in national HIV surveillance systems and are hidden and stigmatized in many settings. Female sex workers have been reported to be at high risk for HIV infection in nearly every setting where they have been studied, yet in 2012 we still have limited understanding of the relative burden of HIV in these women.
Interventions targeting behavioral and structural-level risk factors for HIV among sex workers have proven successful for increasing protective behaviours and decreasing HIV and STI transmission. Despite these promising results, in Russia, the 2010-2011 UNGASS report indicates only 3% of sex workers are reached by HIV programmes across the country.
From 2001 to 2011, the best practices of HIV prevention among sex workers were collected in 75 cities of 50 Russian regions. The projects implemented in the Russian Federation used the comprehensive prevention model aimed at organizing accessible and adequate health services for sex workers.
After project financing stops, 13 organizations are planning to continue HIV/AIDS prevention activities among sex workers . However, it is obvious that without adequate support it would be difficult to maintain sustainability of the programmes.

HIV risk is shaped as much by the partners we choose as by the sex we have. In the absence of widespread uptake of couples testing, most partnerships lack information about the prospective partners’ sero-status. This paper seeks to determine how effective individuals are at managing this uncertainty. Previous research suggests that individuals use selective partnership formation to select against risky attributes, such as age, mobility, and widowhood. What remains unclear, however, is how accurate people are at selecting sero-negative partners. This paper examines trends in marital partnership formation and sero-sorting over 13 years using census data from a sero-surveillance site in Southwestern Uganda. Taking into account population composition changes over time, this paper finds evidence of intra-group preference among both sero-positives and sero-negatives. This paper provides the first quantitative analysis of sero-sorting and the effectiveness of partnership selection as an HIV prevention strategy.

Background: HIV prevalence among transgender people (TG) in Thailand is around 10% in 2010. The National AIDS Strategy places MSM and TG in the same category for programming, yet they are very different in terms of needs and risk behaviors. Many data sources do not disaggregate between them and less effort for TG since their prevalence is less. Having exclusive data for TG will help encourage policy makers and program implementers to better prioritize and design policies and programs.

Methods: The data is drawn from the client behavioral monitoring database of the Thai National MSM program. It was collected by outreach workers in 30 provinces from mid-2010 to mid-2011. They were completed after reaching out to clients.

Results: In the one-year period, data was collected on 47,760 clients who were eligible for the study; 10,669 cases (22.3 %) are transgender. TG significantly use condoms less than MSM with both regular (76%/78%) and casual partners (90%/91%) and have less access to VCT (8%/9%) and STIs (5%/7%) services.

Conclusions: Risk and health seeking behaviors of TG and MSM are different. TG programs should be specifically designed to respond to their needs and risk behaviors. TG peer educators should receive more opportunities for capacity building to help maximize the effectiveness of the intervention programs.