Percent of population who had high risk sex in the last year

Percent of population who had high risk sex in the last year

Percent of population who had high risk sex in the last year

The proportion of respondents who have had sex with a non-marital, non-cohabiting partner in the last 12 months of all respondents reporting sexual activity in the last 12 months

Respondents are asked about their marital status and the last three sexual partners within the last 12 months. For each partner, details are taken of cohabiting status as well as duration of the relationship, condom use, and other factors. The numerator is those respondents who say that in the last 12 months, they have had sex with someone who is not their spouse or the person they live with. The denominator for this indicator is all respon­dents who report having any sex in the last 12 months.

The numerator should exclude polygynous men who live with several wives unless they also have sex with women who are not part of their household.

This indicator is calculated as:

(Number of respondents who report having sex with a non-marital, non-cohabiting partner in the last 12 months / Total number of respondents who report having sex in the last 12 months) x 100

Data Requirement(s):

Self-reported data from survey respondents

UNAIDS general population survey; DHS AIDS Mod­ule; FHI BSS (adult)

The spread of HIV depends upon unprotected sex with people who also have other partners. Most monogamous relationships are cohabiting, although the reverse is not necessarily true. Partners who do not live together œ who have sex only occasionally œ are those who are most likely to have other partners over the course of a year. These partnerships therefore carry a higher risk of HIV transmission than partnerships that remain outside a wider sexual network. AIDS prevention programs try to discourage high numbers of partnerships and to en­courage mutual monogamy. This indicator estimates the proportion of the population that engages in relatively high-risk partnerships and that is therefore more likely to be exposed to sexual networks within which HIV can circulate.

This indicator proposes a different definition for high risk sex than that commonly used in the past. Obviously, a change in definition will upset trend data for coun­tries that have collected data using a different defini­tion from the one currently proposed. However, this difficulty is surmountable. The proposed data collec­tion instrument allows for both the old and new ver­sions of the indicator to be calculated simultaneously. In practice, in existing data, which allow for the com­parison between the two indicators, the difference has been small. The change is proposed largely because countries report dissatisfaction with previous indicators, arising mostly from respondents‘ difficulties in under­standing the definitions of regular and non-regular part­nerships.

This indicator gives a picture of levels of non-monoga­mous sex. If people stop having sex with all of their extramarital partners, the change will be captured by changes in this indicator. However, if people simply decrease from seven extra-marital partners to one, for example, the indicator will not reflect a change, even though this reduction may have a significant impact on the epidemic spread of HIV and may count as a pro­gram success.

HIV/AIDS