Why women with HIV are still dying early, even when virus is not main cause

Article excerpt

Women with HIV die prematurely not from the virus itself, but from preventable, trauma-related conditions like substance use and mental illness, yet these crucial causes rarely appear in official death records. New research from UC San Francisco reveals a critical gap in how deaths among women with HIV are documented and understood. The finding suggests that public health efforts have narrowed their focus too tightly on viral suppression while overlooking the social determinants and co-occurring conditions that actually drive mortality in this population. Addressing the gap requires both better data collection and a broader approach to care that treats the whole person, not just the infection.