Desk Review: ‘Spousal Transmission of HIV among Married Women in Bangladesh: a country assessment report, October 2008’.
The desk review was done in collaboration with UNAIDS in October 2008.
Principal Investigator: Tarzia Chowdhury
Investigators: Dr. Nafisa Huq, Dr. Farhana Haque
Background
As per the AIDS commission report, increasing number of women in spite of having a single sex partner gets infected from their husbands or sex partners outside wedlock. Also, many married men are regular clients of sex workers or are injecting drug users and thus faithful female partners cannot be presumed to be safe. This poses a potential route of pushing ‘low risk females’ to ‘high risk groups’ by way of spousal transmission. Thus it is of vital importance to find out ways of dealing with such routes of spreading HIV/AIDS infection.
Objective
The objective of the study was to analyze existing data and evidence to help design a comprehensive prevention strategy including favorable policies and pragmatic interventions to protect married women getting infected through ‘spousal transmission’