HIV
AIDS SPREAD BECAUSE OF CULTURAL PRACTICES

In Rwanda where many men were killed during genocide, many women have now developed a system called Kwinjira, where they willingly set out to share men to be able to have children and family. In Zambia it has been asserted that in some cases it is women who promote polygamy by looking down upon single women in society, encouraging them to marry men who already have wives.

Some societies have a practice of widow-inheritance or widow-sexual cleansing of women who have been widowed. This is done supposedly to chase away the spirits of the deceased husband but it increases the widows' risk of HIV transmission or re-infection. Widows who refuse the ritual may be sent away from their husband's land by relatives. Therefore since most widows are uneducated, do not own property and are unemployed the practice continues. For most widows the choice is between being inherited and being infected and having food, or starving. In Masaka in Uganda there is a tendency to remarry or develop new relationships after the previous one or two relations were ended due to death of spouse/partner from AIDS.

Wife inheritance (taking the wife of a diseased relative to be your own) and polygamy conflict with HIV prevention in countries like Kenya and Zimbabwe (AIDS INfothek, Office of Public Health, Switzerland 2000).

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