This first large-scale national study to examine the relationship between intimate partner violence against wives and clinically verified HIV infection appears in the Aug. 13 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Study author Jay Silverman, an associate professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, studied 28,139 married Indian women as part of a national family health survey conducted across India during 2005 and 2006. The results indicated 35 percent of the women reported being physically abused and 7.7 percent sexually abused by their spouses.
About 0.73 percent of women who had been physically and sexually abused were infected, compared with 0.19 percent among non-abused women. The study found that abusive husbands, who may have had sex outside marriage, may force their wives to have unprotected sex that raises the risk of HIV infection.
The study authors suggest that health officials working in AIDS eradication should also target wives who are forced to have unsafe sex, along with their husbands, for preventive measures.
About 2.4 million of the world's 33 million people infected with HIV live in India, according to a report released in July by UNAIDS. About 1 million of India's cases are women, the report said.
The rate is the third largest of any country in the world, and infections among women are rising.
