Bruno Masquelier (Universite Catholique de Louvain) and Georges Reniers (LSHTM) prepared a short article on AIDS and the gender gap in life expectancy in Africa for Populations et Sociétés; a popular science journal published by the Institut National d’Etudes Démographiques (INED)

“In 2016, a million people died from the disease, and almost three-quarters of these deaths occurred in sub-Saharan Africa (73%). Recent trends are nonetheless encouraging; the number of AIDS related deaths in the region has halved since 2005. The expansion of antiretroviral treatment programs has been an important factor in these mortality declines, and women appear to have benefitted most from the treatment scale-up: the number of AIDS related deaths among women aged 15 and above declined by 58% between 2005 and 2016, and by 43% among men. As a result, women now account for the minority (47%) of AIDS deaths in Africa, yet remain overrepresented (59%) among people living with HIV in the region. Women also continue to lose more years of life expectancy to AIDS than men. This article explores explanations for these trends in HIV prevalence and AIDS mortality, and the apparent gender paradoxes that they entail.”

The full text of the article can be found here.