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Socio‐economic differences in HIV / AIDS mortality in South Africa
Author(s) -
Probst Charlotte,
Parry Charles D. H.,
Rehm Jürgen
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
tropical medicine and international health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.056
H-Index - 114
eISSN - 1365-3156
pISSN - 1360-2276
DOI - 10.1111/tmi.12712
Subject(s) - medicine , confidence interval , relative risk , demography , human immunodeficiency virus (hiv) , environmental health , immunology , sociology
Objectives To quantify socio‐economic differences in the risk of HIV / AIDS mortality in South Africa for different measures of socio‐economic status. Methods Systematic literature search in Web of Knowledge and PubMed. Measures of relative risk ( RR ) were pooled separately for education, income, assets score and employment status as measures of socio‐economic status, using inverse‐variance weighted DerSimonian‐Laird random effects meta‐analyses. Results Ten studies were eligible for inclusion comprising over 175 000 participants and 6700 deaths. For income ( RR 1.55, 95% confidence interval ( CI ) 1.15–2.09), assets score ( RR 1.63, 95% CI 1.12–2.36) and employment status ( RR 1.52, 95% CI 1.21–1.92), persons of low socio‐economic status had an over 50% higher risk of dying from HIV / AIDS . The RR of 1.10 for education was not significant (95% CI 0.74–1.65). Conclusions Future research should identify effective strategies to reduce HIV / AIDS mortality and alleviate the consequences of HIV / AIDS deaths, particularly for poorer households.