SOUTHERN AFRICA: Understanding infidelity

CAPE TOWN, 5 June 2008 (PlusNews) - It refers to the practice of having more than one sexual partner at the same time, which experts say is a key driver of Southern Africa's devastating HIV/AIDS epidemic.

In a South African population-based survey in 2005, 40 percent of men and 25 percent of women aged between 15 and 24 reported having concurrent partners. To try and understand why, the Soul City Institute for Health and Development Communication, a multimedia health promotion project, conducted research to find out how South Africans actually view these relationships.

Prof Sue Goldstein, a researcher at Soul City, presented the findings from focus groups of men and women across the country to delegates at the 4th Public Health Association of South Africa conference in Cape Town this week.

"Multiple, concurrent partnerships appear to be the accepted norm in many South African communities," she said. The attitudes and beliefs that perpetuated this norm were "astonishingly similar" across rural and urban divides, and even to those found in similar studies in other countries of the region.

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