Older Women and HIV/AIDS Facts

• About 18 percent of AIDS cases in the U.S. female population are said to be in women older than age 50; and numbers of cases are expected to increase as women of all ages survive longer due to improved drug therapy and other treatment advances.
• In the last decade, AIDS cases in women over 50 were reported to have tripled, while heterosexual transmission rates in this age group may have increased as much as 106 percent.
• "Older women," according to UNAIDS, "appear to have higher incidence than older men, and during a recent 5-year period, the number of new cases in this group increased by 40 percent. More than half of the infected over 50 are of African-American and Hispanic origin, indicating greater risks among minority groups."
• In the U.S., elder African American women are disproportionately affected; in 2001 they comprised 11 percent of the population of women older than 50, but accounted for more than 50 percent of the AIDS and 65 percent of the HIV cases in this age group.
• While all older individuals with HIV infection or AIDS usually are invisible, isolated and ignored, this is particularly true of women, who often feel unable to disclose their HIV status due to stigma, even to family and friends and, certainly, not their community.
• Despite myths and stereotypes, many senior women are sexually active and some are drug users; therefore, their behaviors can put them at risk for HIV infection.
• Health care and service providers -- and older women themselves -- do not realize that they are at the same risk as other age populations; professionals often are reluctant to discuss or question matters of sexuality with their aging patients/clients.
• Most women (and all older persons) are first diagnosed with HIV at a late stage of infection, and often become ill with AIDS-related complications and die sooner than their younger counterparts; these deaths can be attributed to original misdiagnoses and immune systems that naturally weaken with age.