Twenty-eight years after its first appearance, ...

Twenty-eight years after its first appearance, the HIV/AIDS epidemic is still one of the most serious and uncontrollable disease hurting the global health. Nowhere, its impact is more severe in Sub-Saharan Africa, with an adult prevalence of 5% (see Table1) higher than any other part of the world as of 3.1% and 18.1% of population respectively in Nigeria and South Africa (see Table2). In Sub-Saharan Africa, HIV/AIDS is implanted in social structures, making it an important disease for studying the social aspects of this disease among the population of Sub-Saharan Africa and in particular Nigeria and South-Africa. In this part of the essay, we will focus on the social aspects that are shaping AIDS expansion in Sub-Saharan Africa including poverty, gender inequality, marital systems, sexual behaviors and migration patterns.
Primary, the poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa also represent the rate of uneducated people. Many women are not educated about their bodies, their reproductive system or HIV/AIDS. In general, in poor families, women will stay home, will learn how to be a house wife and wait for their maturity to get married because they are considered as “The Weak Sex” while the young men will be sent to school in order to receive education and later on to be a provider for their future families. Later on, in relationships, gender inequality is well-known to be existent, men’s needs are expected to be dominant, men and women do not communicate about sexuality, sexual transmitted diseases or AIDS, because women being uneducated are usually considered as inferior and their needs often come last. (See 1)
Second, the marital system is one of the prominent social aspects of HIV/AIDS
in Sub-Saharan Africa. Men are allowed to have as many wives as they want, in other terms polygamy is tolerated and often imposed to women; fact that makes contraction and transmission of STD’s very easy among these people. Also, married men are expected to have multiple partners but women are expected to ignore this fact; married women might have only their husbands as their single partner, but still be at high risk for HIV/AIDS because their husbands have multiple partners. Last, men are also so powerful that they usually control and sexually abuse their wife because they are providers and most of the time those men feel accused of cheating if their wives ask them to use condoms. (See 2)
At last, migrations is a huge social aspect of HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa, many people from other countries move around and work in different countries in Africa. In general these people will carry AIDS and have sexual intercourse with young women usually in needs of money that will later contaminate local young men and so on.
In conclusion, we can say that to solve the problem of HIV/AIDS, “The Six Paths of Empowerment” (See2) proposed by the UNAIDS should be strictly considered. Right now, many solutions for HIV/AIDS focus ...