What is the impact of TB/HIV on women?
Worldwide, women bear a disproportionate burden of poverty, ill-health, malnutrition and disease. TB causes more deaths among women than all causes of maternal mortality combined, and more than 900 million women are infected with TB worldwide. This year, 1 million women will die and 2.5 million, mainly between the ages of 15 and 44, will become sick from the disease. Once infected with TB, women of reproductive age are more susceptible to developing TB disease than men of the same age. Women in this age group are also at greater risk of becoming infected with HIV. As a result, in certain regions, young women aged 15–24 with TB outnumber young men of the same age with the disease. While poverty is the underlying cause of much infection in rural areas, poverty is also aggravated by the impact of TB. In 1996, a study by the World Bank, WHO and Harvard University reported TB as a leading cause of “healthy years lost” among women of reproductive age.
