Contents
- Cover Story
Exploring the Potential of HIV Microbicides
Cover Story
Exploring the Potential of HIV Microbicides
As the number of HIV-infected women escalates worldwide, vaginal microbicides may help slow the spread of AIDS.
The face of the AIDS epidemic has changed considerably in the last quarter of a century. Although the disease was first identified in homosexual men, today women comprise half of the world’s nearly 40 million HIV-infected individuals. Most of these women became infected through heterosexual contact.
Women of Galufu, Malawi, a small village in southern Africa, prepare food after the funeral of a female villager who died of AIDS a few hours earlier. Poverty in the village has increased dramatically in the last few years because of drought and AIDS. (Photo by Per-Anders Pettersson/Getty Images)
Women are particularly vulnerable to HIV infection, because their mucosal exposure to the virus during intercourse is greater than men’s. Condoms can help prevent HIV transmission, but their use is not under a woman’s control. Because of these and other vulnerabilities, new HIV infections now arise more rapidly among women than among men in many parts of the world.
Public health officials have long called for new HIV prevention methods for women—methods that are inexpensive, easy-to-deliver, and under their control. This need is especially urgent, given that a cure for AIDS and development of a safe and effective HIV vaccine has proven elusive.
