Men’s heightened risk of AIDS-related death: the legacy of gendered HIV testing and treatment strategies

Link here. Excerpt:

'Women are frequently depicted as the face of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa (SAA) [1–3], where they comprise nearly 58% of all reported HIV infections [4]. Donor dollars, policies and HIV programmes have followed suit, resulting in a near-exclusive focus on women (e.g. [5]). Although African women are represented as particularly vulnerable to HIV infection [6], it is men, not women, who are more likely to die of AIDS [7–9]. AIDS prevalence may have the face of a woman, but AIDS mortality has the face of a man.
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Much of the literature implicitly blames men for their poor use of testing and treatment, focusing on the role of masculinity as the primary explanation [21,22]. Recent data, however, raise doubt that masculinity is the main culprit. Men are just as likely as nonpregnant women to initiate voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) in some settings [23,24], and once tested positive, men initiate ART at similar rates as women [25,26]. These findings suggest that institutional supply-side barriers, and not solely masculinity, contribute to men’s lower rates of testing and treatment.'