Goemkarponn desk
PANAJI: Over the last five years, there has been a significant decline in the incidence of HIV/AIDS among Goan women.
According to data, women made up 40% of all newly reported cases in the State in 2019. The proportion of women among those who reported new HIV infections in the State fell to just 29% last year.
Although there has been an 11.7 per cent decline in HIV infections among the State’s female population over a longer time period of a decade and a half since 2009, health officials are unable to pinpoint the reasons for such a drastic drop in the rate at which women are becoming infected with the virus.
However, since 2009, the rate of HIV infection among men in Goa has risen by 10.2 per cent. In actuality, for the past 14 years since 2009, men have accounted for 59.3% of all HIV infections, while women have accounted for just 40.7%.
Since 2019, there has only been one year in which there has been a sharp increase in the rate of infection among women: 2015. In that year, women made up 45.5% of all HIV-positive cases.
But starting in 2016 and continuing through last year, the number of women reporting HIV infections has been steadily declining; in 2022, the percentage of female victims was at its lowest, at 25.6%.
