title: Network of sexual contacts and sexually transmitted HIV infection in Burkina Faso.
abstract: Two thirds of the people who have been infected by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in the world live in Sub-Saharan African countries. The results of a study measuring the degree distribution of the network of sexual contacts in Burkina Faso are described. Such a network is responsible for the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, and in particular of HIV. It has been found that the number of different sexual partners reported by males is a power law distribution with an exponent gamma = 2.9 (0.1). This is consistent with the degree distribution of scale-free networks. On the other hand, the females can be divided into two groups: the prostitutes with an average of 400 different partners per year, and females with a stable partner, having a rapidly decreasing degree distribution. Such a result may have important implications on the control of sexually transmitted diseases and in particular of HIV. Since scale-free networks have no epidemic threshold, a campaign based on prevention and anti-viral treatment of few highly connected nodes can be more successful than any policy based on enlarged but random distribution of the available anti-viral treatments.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Catania and INFN-Catania, Catania, Italy.
authors.forename: Vito
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Latora
authors.forename: André
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Nyamba
authors.forename: Jacques
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Simpore
authors.forename: Bahiré
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Sylvette
authors.forename: Sandwidi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Diane
authors.forename: Bukiki
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Sylvére
authors.forename: Salvatore
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Musumeci
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002050:Burkina Faso / Q000453:epidemiology; D016358:Contact Tracing; D005260:Female; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000635:transmission*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008954:Models, Biological; D012747:Sexual Partners