Injected Contraceptive Increases AIDS Risk for African Women

My Note: This is indeed a very disturbing issue. Another medical experimentation on Africans? This warning was first given back in 2004. Read it here. A study was published later in the Lancet (2011) and subsequently reported in the New York Times, sent a wave of anxiety through the global health protection community with the claim that HIV-negative women might face a two-fold increased risk of acquiring the infection from their HIV-positive partners, and that HIV-positive women could have a two-fold increased risk of passing it on to the non-infected partners. The issue has enormous implications given the wide-scale use of injected hormonal contraception in areas of high HIV prevalence.

How many sisters and mothers have already been infected? How many of them perished? Egziabher, the Lord knows! Are Africans Promiscuous Unto Death? Read it here.

Using contraceptive injections could make women twice as likely to contract HIV, claim scientists.

They also increase the chances of male partners becoming infected, according to the study by researchers from the University of Washington and Seattle in the U.S.

Their results came from tracking nearly 4,000 couples for 18 months in seven African countries.

In most instances the women taking part were using DMPA – Depo-Provera, which is a popular injectable contraception in sub-Saharan Africa. (The pharma giant, Pfizer, makes Depo-Provera)

Either the man or woman in each couple had HIV – the Aids-causing virus.

The researchers noted which people used contraceptives and the rates at which the other member of the couple became HIV-positive.

Their results, published in the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases, show that women who used hormone-based contraceptive injections were twice as likely to contract and subsequently transmit HIV, as those who didn’t.

The researchers suspect that the contraceptive is altering vaginal tissue in a way that’s increasing the possibility of HIV transmission.

The authors of the study admit that it is not 100 per cent reliable as it relied on those taking part telling the truth about their contraception use.

Nevertheless, it has been seen by experts as a cause for alarm, given the sheer number of women in Africa that use injectable contraception.

Because it only has to be taken once every month, it is very popular.

Around six per cent of all women between 15and 49 in sub-Saharan Africa rely on it – that’s a headcount of around 12million.

Additional information…

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