BelowTheMasonDixon
Veteran
An added difficulty was that Morris would be asking Ugandans to answer intimate questions about their sexual behavior. So she replaced the impersonal language of standard questionnaires with a structured conversation. She asked the respondent whom he or she last had sex with, how the couple met, how long they had been together, whether they were still together, and so on. Then she asked about the respondent’s previous sexual partner. “Respondents love it, because it’s really like gossip,” Morris explains. “In a way, people are telling the story of their lives.”
Morris then conducted similar surveys in Thailand and the United States—with fascinating results. She found that the average Ugandan and the average American claimed roughly the same number of sexual partners in their lives. About 25 percent of people (of both sexes) in both countries said they had more than 10 partners in their lives. But similar rates of promiscuity did not result in similar rates of infection. The HIV rate in Uganda peaked at 18 percent in the early to mid-1990s but never exceeded 1 percent in the United States. And in Thailand, where many more men—65 percent—reported 10 or more partners, the HIV rate barely rose above 2 percent.
A key difference between Uganda and Thailand, Morris found, is that men in Uganda often maintained two or more long-term sexual relationships at once. In Thailand, most men had only one long-term sexual relationship—with their wives. Half the Thai men in Morris’s survey said that they had sex with prostitutes but rarely the same one twice. On average they saw five prostitutes each year. Although many Thai prostitutes are HIV-positive, the men’s risk of infection was relatively low because Thai men generally had sex with each one only once.
The likelihood of contracting the virus during a single sexual act is believed to be quite low, between 1 in 100 and 1 in 1,000. So if an HIV-positive man has sex once with hundreds of different uninfected people, chances are he will infect only one of them. Generating an HIV epidemic such as Uganda’s probably requires that people be exposed to the virus repeatedly. As Morris discovered, Ugandan men and women had sex many times over many years with each of their partners. If one of those partners was HIV-positive, the relationship would prove very risky over time.
In the United States, Morris found a different pattern. Heterosexual Americans, like Ugandans, tend to have several long-term relationships, but they usually have them sequentially, not at the same time. If an American contracts HIV, she probably won’t pass it on right away, and if she eventually does, her new partner probably won’t pass it on right away either.
In 1993 Morris teamed up with mathematician Mirjam Kretzschmar of the National Institute of Public Health in Holland to develop a new computer program that could model simultaneous partnerships. So far she has run the program with data from Uganda, Thailand, and the United States, and the simulations reproduce the same prevalence of HIV observed in those countries in the early 1990s, when the data were collected.
Morris contends that Africans in ordinary heterosexual relationships are linked, not only to each other but also to the partners of their partners’ partners—and to the partners of those partners—via a web of sexual relationships extending across huge regions. If one member contracts HIV, then everyone else may too. Anti-AIDS campaigns warn against contact with prostitutes, but Morris says simultaneous long-term relationships are far more dangerous.
Why is AIDS Worse in Africa? | DiscoverMagazine.com
Morris then conducted similar surveys in Thailand and the United States—with fascinating results. She found that the average Ugandan and the average American claimed roughly the same number of sexual partners in their lives. About 25 percent of people (of both sexes) in both countries said they had more than 10 partners in their lives. But similar rates of promiscuity did not result in similar rates of infection. The HIV rate in Uganda peaked at 18 percent in the early to mid-1990s but never exceeded 1 percent in the United States. And in Thailand, where many more men—65 percent—reported 10 or more partners, the HIV rate barely rose above 2 percent.
A key difference between Uganda and Thailand, Morris found, is that men in Uganda often maintained two or more long-term sexual relationships at once. In Thailand, most men had only one long-term sexual relationship—with their wives. Half the Thai men in Morris’s survey said that they had sex with prostitutes but rarely the same one twice. On average they saw five prostitutes each year. Although many Thai prostitutes are HIV-positive, the men’s risk of infection was relatively low because Thai men generally had sex with each one only once.
The likelihood of contracting the virus during a single sexual act is believed to be quite low, between 1 in 100 and 1 in 1,000. So if an HIV-positive man has sex once with hundreds of different uninfected people, chances are he will infect only one of them. Generating an HIV epidemic such as Uganda’s probably requires that people be exposed to the virus repeatedly. As Morris discovered, Ugandan men and women had sex many times over many years with each of their partners. If one of those partners was HIV-positive, the relationship would prove very risky over time.
In the United States, Morris found a different pattern. Heterosexual Americans, like Ugandans, tend to have several long-term relationships, but they usually have them sequentially, not at the same time. If an American contracts HIV, she probably won’t pass it on right away, and if she eventually does, her new partner probably won’t pass it on right away either.
In 1993 Morris teamed up with mathematician Mirjam Kretzschmar of the National Institute of Public Health in Holland to develop a new computer program that could model simultaneous partnerships. So far she has run the program with data from Uganda, Thailand, and the United States, and the simulations reproduce the same prevalence of HIV observed in those countries in the early 1990s, when the data were collected.
Morris contends that Africans in ordinary heterosexual relationships are linked, not only to each other but also to the partners of their partners’ partners—and to the partners of those partners—via a web of sexual relationships extending across huge regions. If one member contracts HIV, then everyone else may too. Anti-AIDS campaigns warn against contact with prostitutes, but Morris says simultaneous long-term relationships are far more dangerous.
Why is AIDS Worse in Africa? | DiscoverMagazine.com
...that's the politicians, government employees, and the "elite" crowd right? 
