Just today I read an article at “The State Column”.  Under the headline, “Contraceptive may increase risk of HIV in women: Study” the teaser read: ” A new study released Monday finds that African-American women using an injectable hormone contraceptive are twice as likely to spread the virus (HIV) to their male partners, compared to women who use no contraception.”

Whoa that’s some serious stuff. So I read on to find out exactly what this was about.

The study claimed that women who already had HIV were more likely to spread the disease to their uninfected partner, over the course of two years, if they used this injectable contraceptive than those who had not. Make sense so far. But the study involved 4,000 African couples.  One person (the woman) tested positive for HIV while her partner did not.  The couples were located in Bostwana, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia to be exact. Researchers are hypothesizing that the women who use this drug have higher concentrations of HIV inside their cervixes.

So herein lies my confusion. If the study was conducted on African women, why were the results being applied to African-American women?

As an African American woman I’m not trying to further distinguish myself from our sisters in Africa. There’s been plenty of that. I realize our physiological makeup still holds several similarities to the women in Africa. And I won’t pretend that  HIV isn’t a serious issue within the black community, devastatingly so. But I’m also not ignorant enough to believe that black women are the only women who suffer from the disease.  If not one African American women participated in the study then I don’t understand how the results can be applied.

Can someone help me?

Even if the results are applicable to African-American women, how do we know they don’t transfer to all women equally. In fact, at the end of the article “The State Column” mentions that 12 million women in sub-Saharan Africa use this injectable contraceptive compared 1.2 million women in the United States. Women, not African American women. From my knowledge the study didn’t include European or American white women or any other racial/ethnic combination, so how do we know only African-American women need to be on alarm?

I won’t say outright that this is racial targeting but I will give “The State Column” a severe side eye.

You can read the entire article and results of the study over at “The State Column”.