Why African women are vulnurable to deadly diseases

By Eric Sindabi

Recent statistics indicate that at least over 65% of people infected with the deadly HIV and Aids in the sub Sahara Africa are women. A further survey on the infection among women in Africa shows that many married women who though may remain faithful to their husbands are likely to be infected with the pandemic due to their pre-marital sexual experiences.
The Author of a Book; the Aids Pandemic, Richard Willis believes that many young women in Africa are frequently engaged in sex early in life with multiple partners. Once they get married, they shift to a faithful life but live with STDs among other sexually transmitted ailments.
Another close source of sexually transmitted diseases among women in Africa according to the Book is the one dreaded Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) culture that is prevalent in many African tribes.Here, transmission of ailments is increased by the sharing of ritual tools like blades, knives, traditional medicines and costumes during FGM.
Diseases like HIV and Aids and others greatly flourish in conditions or permanent effects on genitals of FGM victims. Such effects include conditions like; Anatomical distortions, Partial closures of virgina, Urinary tract infections and chronic Urinary retention.
Research interestingly has revealed other health hazards performed on young females in Africa that lead to the vulnerability of disease infections.
For example apart from FGM,such other factors are like;Rape,rough sex, traumatic injuries, genital cures after injury and fertility enhancement on genitals by Bush doctors. To please their men some African women apply or treat their Vaginas with substances to to enhance virginity. However this affects the womens’apart from men’s genitals. Medical reports indicate that such practices cause injuries to the Virginal system and thus increase the risk of disease infection.
In most African settings it was the duty of the man to go out in the field in search of means to make ends meet. Most modern rural women whose husbands have abandoned them in search of jobs in urban centers risk most are infected with STDs as most indulge in extra marital sexual life due to poverty or in protest over abandonment by their husbands.
With the increased campaigns in the prevention of HIV and Aids disease in Africa, Women and gender stakeholders should keep in mind that they the women are the most vulnerable. Sociologists though have put forward that women are the mothers of nature. Without women there would be no continuation of human generations. The African society thus should treat women and girls with great care.Governments and stakeholders should strive to put in place Laws and policies that protect the female sex under all costs.