Marriage no safety net for AIDS

Marriage is not a safe-haven from HIV infection, with married couples, especially women, more prone to infection than single people, Zimbabwe's National AIDS Council (NAC) has said. According to NAC communications manager, Madeline Dube, infidelity on the part of spouses, mostly men, was to blame for the increased HIV infection rates among married couples. We have actually seen that married women, because of the nature of the society we live in, are very vulnerable to infection. In our society a married woman is taught to be submissive and to give her husband his conjugal rights even if she suspects him of promiscuity," the local Herald newspaper quoted Dube as saying. NAC had established that accepted societal practices like men having extra marital affairs - commonly referred to as "small houses" - were also to blame for the high prevalence of HIV in married people.