Tanzania HIV/AIDS and Malaria Indicator Survey ... - Measure DHS

The survey also assessed condom use among women and men with multiple partners or higherrisksex in the 12 months preceding the survey. Although truly effective protection would require condomuse at every sexual encounter, the sexual encounters covered here are those considered to pose the greatestrisk of HIV transmission. Because of the low proportion of women who reported having more than onepartner in the 12 months before the survey, data are only shown for men. Over one-fifth (22 percent)of men who said they had two or more partners in the past 12 months, said they used a condom thelast time they had sex.Condom use at higher-risk sexual encounters is relatively common. Among women whoreported having had higher-risk intercourse in the past 12 months, 43 percent used a condom at thelast higher-risk sex. For men, the comparable figure is 53 percent.The lower levels of multiple partnership, higher-risk sex, and condom use reported by womencompared with men could be real or could be due to reluctance on the part of women to reportbehaviour that may not be generally accepted. Also, women may not always be aware of condom useby their sexual partners.The proportion of respondents with more than one partner in the past 12 months does not varymuch by age for women; however, it generally increases with age among men. Younger women andmen are more likely to have had higher-risk sex than older respondents; however, this is partlybecause they are less likely to be married. Younger respondents are also more likely than olderrespondents to report having used condoms at the most recent higher-risk sex.As expected, women and men who are married are far less likely to report having higher-risksex than their counterparts who have never married or who used to be married. Urban women andmen are more likely to have higher-risk sex than rural residents, and are also more likely to usecondoms at higher-risk sex. There are large differentials by region. For example, the proportion ofmen who had two or more sexual partners in the 12 months before the survey ranges from 6 percent inArusha region to almost 28 percent in Mtwara Region.Education and socio-economic status, as measured by the wealth index (quintiles), do nothave a clear relationship with either the number of sexual partners or the propensity of having higherrisksex. However, condom use at last higher-risk sex increases substantially as education and wealthquintile increases.Regarding mean number of lifetime sexual partners among those who ever had sex, womenreported a mean of 2.4, compared with 6.8 for men. The mean number of lifetime sexual partnersincreases with age from 2.5 among men age 15-19 to 9.7 among men age 40-49; it is also particularlyhigh among men who are divorced, separated or widowed (11.2).7.5 PAID SEXAs mentioned above, higher-risk sex is defined as sex with a nonmarital, noncohabitingpartner. This includes sex with commercial sex workers (i.e., prostitutes). Sex with prostitutes isparticularly risky because they have many partners and are thus more likely to have sexuallytransmitted infections. Men interviewed in the THMIS were asked about paid sex.Table 7.4 shows that 8 percent of men age 15-49 paid for sex in the 12 months before thesurvey and 60 percent of these men reported that they used a condom at their most recent paid sexualintercourse. Only 5 percent of young respondents age 15-19 paid for sex, more than half (56 percent)of whom used a condom at their last paid sexual intercourse. However, among those in the next agegroup age 20-24, 13 percent had paid sex and 58 percent reported using a condom at last paid sex.Men who are divorced, separated, or widowed are particularly likely to engage in paid sex (23percent), but are no more likely than married or single men to use condoms when they have sex formoney.80 | HIV/AIDS-Related Behaviour