HIV sero-discordant couples living in sub-Saharan Africa: Prevalence rates and sexual health behaviors over time.

The HIV epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa has now entered its fourth decade. As the epidemic has matured the role of HIV sero-discordant couples, couples in which one partner is HIV positive and the other is HIV negative, as a source of new infections has increased. As a primary contributor to the continuation of the HIV epidemic, sero-discordant couples have proven to be an important population for research and prevention efforts and yet they are still an understudied population in terms of prevalence rates and sexual health behaviors, particularly in terms of variance across regions and change over time. The goal of this paper, which is part of a larger dissertation project, is to quantitatively fill this gap in the research using data from the Demographic Health Surveys (DHS) for 14 countries collected over the last decade. As this paper is still in the data analysis phase, only preliminary analyses are presented in this document. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]