Figures like this have led epidemiologists to conclude that transgender women must be getting their HIV from men who have sex with other men. Yet prevalence in the heterosexual male population is less than 0.4%. HIV prevalence in gay men is currently about 12-18% but prevalence in transgender women is 30%. Transgender women worldwide generally have rates of HIV even higher than gay and bisexual men, and Peru is no exception. The study was presented at the recent Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI 2019) by Dr Jessica Long of the University of Washington in Seattle. A study from Peru’s capital, Lima, has found that the sexual partners of transgender women there are largely heterosexual, cisgender men who rarely have sex with other men.
