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Serodiscordant relationships for Africans in the UK often marked by uncertainty and disempowerment
Roger Pebody, 2011-11-25 12:00:00
African people in the UK who are involved in a relationship where one person has HIV and the other does not have a wide range of experiences, according to a new study from Sigma Research. Nonetheless, two recurrent themes are uncertainty and disempowerment.
Many people in such relationships remain uncertain of their ability to have children or to have sex without HIV transmission occurring, and generally lack information on alternatives to condoms. More generally, many were uncertain about their future and the long-term viability of their relationship.
Driven by a fear of rejection or abandonment, some of the partners who had HIV seemed to occupy a position of limited power within their relationship. HIV-positive women tended to be especially disempowered.
Relationships where one person has HIV and the other does not are often described as being ‘serodiscordant’ or ‘serodifferent’. Whereas in-depth, qualitative studies of serodiscordant relationships have previously been conducted with gay men, the experiences of African people living in the UK have not previously been explored.
For this study, the researchers employed a community-participatory approach in which a team of black African people were recruited from HIV community-based organizations and trained in interview and research skills.
Sixty black African adults were interviewed for the study. Most of the respondents (44 individuals) were diagnosed with HIV, and either described their current relationship with an HIV-negative or untested partner, or a previous relationship which had ended. It was much harder to recruit the 16 respondents who did not have HIV and who described their relationship with an HIV-positive partner.
Two-thirds of the respondents were women and their average age was 40. The majority came from either Zimbabwe, Uganda, Nigeria or Zambia and they had been in the UK for an average of eleven years. Less than a fifth were in full-time employment.
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