Issue Brief on HIV/AIDS

During armed conflicts, civilians and combatants suffer torture, wounds and injuries requiring medical treatment. If they are exposed to infected blood, or if they receive medical care with contaminated instruments or get transfusions of unscreened blood, then their risks are magnified. In many war zones, the damage to health systems results in inabilities to maintain even basic ‘universal precautions' of sterilizing instruments or cleaning hospital linen. Equipment and supplies for screening blood may be destroyed or unavailable at the same time that the need for transfusions increases dramatically. Sexual violence and exploitation, all too common in conflict and post-conflict settings, contributes to transmission as well. Rape by an infected man directly exposes women to the virus, and the abrasions or tearing of vaginal tissues which may result increase the risk of infection dramatically. Tragically and most cruelly, in some conflicts (such as Rwanda), the planned and purposeful HIV infection of women has been a tool of ethnic warfare. Even as conflicts subside, extremely difficult economic and social conditions often leave many people unemployed and unable to resume their normal community or family lives. Where AIDS and opportunistic infections are already a problem, women bear the largest burden of care for family members.