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AIDS: Role of Gay Men in Spreading Virus Is Ignored in Africa, Study Finds
By DONA LD G. McNEIL Jr.
New York Times
July 20, 2009
The role of gay sex in the transmission of the virus that causes AIDS in Africa has been long ignored, say the authors of a new study in the medical journal Lancet.
While most transmission of the virus in Africa is heterosexual, 19 recent studies of African men who have sex with men show that they have "considerably higher" infection rates than other adult men in their respective countries, said the authors, who were from Oxford University and research institutions in Ghana and Kenya.
These men also have less access to prevention and care; most African countries have allocated no money to gay men, and homosexual sex is illegal in 31 African countries, in four of which men risk the death penalty.
African male sexual networks overlap with male-female ones, the authors found, since many of the men also report recent sex with women or are married. In three genetic studies the authors compared, gay white men in South Africa had a virus from a type common among gay European and American men, while gay black men in Kenya and Senegal had the type circulating in their country's black populations.
Gay men face ridicule from their families and health care workers and harassment by the police, the study reported. And because African governments and media aimed very little safe-sex information at gay men, false rumors were common - including rumors that gay sex or anal sex were safer than heterosexual sex.
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