NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Friday, December 5, 2014

An electrically charged fabric makes for a quick-dissolving delivery vessel for drugs that kill HIV.

You might have heard that AIDS is not as deadly in Africa as it once was. Deaths from the disease have declined by a third in sub-Saharan Africa since 2005.

But the virus is actually becoming more prevalent among adolescents—particularly adolescent girls. In many African nations, teen girls are two or three times more likely to contract HIV than boys are, according to UNICEF.

One reason is that girls in some African nations are pressured into early sexual debut and early marriage. That, combined with low rates of condom use and the possibility of multiple sex partners, increases their potential for HIV exposure over time.

And it’s not just a problem facing African women: In the U.S., 84 percent of women diagnosed with HIV get it through heterosexual sex.