AFRICA: HIV/AIDS and the world's armed forces

A report launched at the Barcelona AIDS conference earlier this year has highlighted increasing HIV/AIDS infection rates among the world's armed forces.

The joint report by Panos London and Healthlink titled, "Combat AIDS: HIV and the World's Armed Forces" was based on group discussions with soldiers in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and South-East Asia.

In many African countries HIV/AIDS prevalence rates averaged 20 to 40 percent among soldiers, reaching as high as 50 to 60 percent in countries where the pandemic has been present for more than a decade, the report noted.

In Zimbabwe, the estimated prevalence among soldiers was 50 percent, compared to the 25 percent of the total adult population living with the virus.

The report argued that widespread illness among soldiers consequently affected the ability of the military to respond to security threats or fulfil its other functions.

Martin Foreman, co-author of the study, said that 22 million people serving in the armed forces across the world were men aged between 20 and 30 years.

"They live in an enclosed society where masculine values predominate and where stress, boredom and alcohol use may be high ... accustomed to taking risks, they may be reluctant to use condoms," Foreman said.

Although the scale of the problem was huge, getting an accurate picture of how HIV/AIDS was affecting the world’s armed forces was extremely difficult. Moreover, it was not easy to gauge the effectiveness with which each military was responding to the pandemic, researchers noted.

Reliable information on rates of infection often did not exist, and even where it did, the military forces may not be willing to open themselves up to independent inspection.

To access the full report: http://www.healthlink.org.uk/combat_aids.html#1.1%20THE%20ARMED%20FORCES%20AND%20HIV