Immigrant African women are becoming some of the main victims of new HIV transmissions in several European countries, especially in France

Julio Godoy:

The French Institute for Health Surveillance (InVS, after its French name) said in a report published this week that 6,700 people were diagnosed with HIV in France last year. This included a substantial number of women from sub-Saharan countries.

According to the report by InVS, 57% of the new HIV cases are women, and among those, 48% are immigrants from sub-Saharan countries.

The paper says that among men, roughly 20% of HIV infections reported in 2005 affected sub-Saharan African immigrants. "But the number of HIV infections among sub-Saharan African women reported in 2005 represents roughly double of the cases detected among sub-Saharan African men in the same period."

A third of all new HIV infections detected in France in 2005 affect an immigrant from sub-Saharan Africa.

The Berlin-based Robert-Koch-Institute (RKI) for health research and surveillance of contagious diseases says in another report that "most of the new cases [of new HIV infections] in Western Europe were caused by heterosexual transmissions among immigrants from sub-Saharan African countries".

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