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CNN Live At Daybreak

AIDS Increasingly Becoming Young Woman's Disease

Aired July 11, 2002 - 05:15   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: AIDS is increasingly becoming a young woman's disease. That's the alarming news from experts at the International AIDS Conference in Spain.

CNN Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta is attending the session. He joins us live now from Barcelona -- good morning.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol from Barcelona.

Let me just point out for a second, this is the central plaza of the International AIDS Conference. About 15,000 delegates have congregated here for meetings and sometimes demonstrations, as well. We've seen a lot of those. This conference has been short on breakthroughs and long on controversy.

Certainly the topic for today, AIDS and Women, 40 million infections exist worldwide, half of them in women. The alarming part about that, the more alarming part about that, as that, as you look younger and younger, in teens and in women in their young 20s, the numbers start to go way up, up to two thirds, certainly promoting one U.N. delegate to say the scourge of AIDS is being placed more so on the young women of Africa than any other place in the world.

A lot of different factors are causing this, one of the most common being the cultural factors in some of the developing nations in sub-Saharan Africa -- intergenerational sex between older men and younger women. Older men with AIDS rates, HIV rates a quarter to a third of the general population, often having unsafe sex with young women, passing on the HIV virus.

That is something that a lot of advocates are talking about. That is something they're trying to exercise preventive measures, teach preventive measures. Obviously we haven't seen a lot of that work because a lot of people aren't abiding by that advice as of yet -- Carol.

COSTELLO: How are they doing, then? Are condoms readily available there or one cannot be found?

GUPTA: Condoms are readily available. That is something that people do know about. The problem is that while they're available, they're not being used. Again, that goes back to some of the cultural phenomena in some of these countries. A lot of these men just don't use the condoms, making the women, requiring women really to be more self-sufficient in the form of microbicides, which have had limited benefit against the virus. Better even were female condoms, which, again, are available, although not widely used. That's something that women are being encouraged to use to make them more self-sufficient.

Diaphragms plus some microbicide are another option that women are being taught. All these things are going, are messages being given back to the developing nations, although we'll have to wait and see if they actually have a significant effect -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right, Dr. Sanjay Gupta reporting live for us from Barcelona, Spain this morning.

Thank you.

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