Although several methods of birth control exist that are largely female-controlled, there is no method

january 2002 Women and HIV/AIDS he number of women living with HIV/AIDS in visibility. There is no effective, truly female-the United States has increased significantly controlled method of HIV prevention that gives Tsince the beginning of the epidemic. At the women the power to protect themselves and their end of 2000, adult and adolescent women partners. Scientists are currently developing accounted for 17 percent, or 134,441, of the microbicides that women (and men who have sex cumulative AIDS cases in the United States. There with men) could use before sexual activity to protect were 10,568 new AIDS cases diagnosed among themselves against HIV and other STDs. These women in 2000, and a total of 67,993 women living prevention methods may even allow women to with AIDS. At the end of 2000, 66,448 women had conceive a child, if desired, while practicing safer died from AIDS in the U.S. Thirty-nine percent of sex. AIDS cases among adolescent and adult women are the result of unprotected heterosexual sex. An Risk Factors additional 39 percent of AIDS cases among women are attributed to injection drug use. Women are more than twice as likely as men to contract HIV through unprotected heterosexual sex. Women of color account for the majority of new HIV is transmitted eight times more efficiently from AIDS cases. African American women and Latinas men to women than from women to men. comprise less than 31 percent of the U ...