Growing up with poverty, Illiteracy and racism ‘increases risk of contracting and succumbing to AIDS’ – Brazil study

Social determinants of health – the social conditions in which people grow up, live and work – can influence the risk of contracting AIDS and the mortality associated with the disease.

This is the main conclusion of a new study carried by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre supported by the la Caixa Foundation, and which has been published in The Lancet Regional Health.

The research team evaluated some 28.3 million people, a representation of the low-income Brazilian population, based on data collected between 2007 and 2015. This is the largest evaluation of social determinants of health and AIDS in Brazil to date.

Researchers concluded that social determinants related to poverty and social vulnerability are strongly associated with a higher burden of AIDS. Specifically, individuals who are black, economically disadvantaged, and lack access to education, are disproportionately affected by the burden of the disease.

Davide Rasella, ISGlobal researcher and lead author of the study, said: “The results of the study show that social determinants of health play an important role in the burden of HIV/AIDS in a highly unequal country like Brazil. The whole chain of events related to the disease, whether it is the risk of becoming infected, developing advanced disease or dying from it, is influenced by these factors.”

Click here for more on the the study.

Text source: ISGlobal