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Girls dating older men more prone to HIV infection

    JOHANNESBURG

    Young South African women are being hard hit by HIV infection resulting from their intimate relationships with older men, according to AIDS experts.

    Doctor Sue Goldstein, a senior managing researcher for Soul City, a local AIDS awareness programme, said the trend was also influenced by young women's failure to acknowledge that older men came with a sexual history.

    "They [young women] get involved with older men and start off having safe sex, but after three months they believe that they can trust their partners and so they stop using condoms," the local Star newspaper quoted Goldstein as saying.

    Recent research by the Human Sciences Research Council showed that women who have sex with men five years younger than themselves had a 9.9 percent chance of contracting HIV, compared to the 23.5 percent chance for those who had sex with a man five years older than they were.

    This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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